He came to my bedside as usual, and he
licked my hand gently and looked up in my face and laid him down
alongside of me on the carpet here and died. Poor Cesar Borgia--he
loved me, and he is dead! And you, Larry, you must not stay here. The
air is fatal. Every breath may be your last. When you have heard what
I want, you must be off at once. If you like, you may come up again to
the funeral before your leave is up. I saw you had three weeks."

Laurence Laughton moved uneasily in his chair and swallowed with
difficulty. "John," he managed to say after an effort, "if you talk to
me like that, I shall go at once. Tell me what it is you want me to do
for you."

"I want you to take care of my wife and of my child, if there be one
born to me after my death."

"Your wife?" repeated Larry, in staring surprise.

"You did not know I was married? I knew it at the time, as the boy
said," and John Manning smiled bitterly.

"Where is she?" was Larry's second query.

"Here."

"Here?"

"In this house. You shall see her before you go. And after the funeral
I want you to get her away from here with what speed you can. Sell
this house for what it will bring, and put the money into government
bonds. You may find it hard to persuade her to move, for she seems to
have a strange liking for this place. She breathes freely in the
deadly air that suffocates me. But you must not let her remain here;
this is no place for her now that a new life and new duties are before
her."

"How was it I did not know of your marriage?" asked Larry.

"I knew nothing about it myself twenty-four hours before it happened,"
answered John Manning. "You need not look surprised. It is a simple
story. I had this shot through the breast at Gettysburg last Fourth of
July. I lay on the hill-side a day and a night before relief came.
Then a farmer took me into his house. A military surgeon dressed my
wounds, but I owed my life to the nursing and care and unceasing
attention of a young lady who was staying with the farmer's daughter.
She had been doing her duty as a nurse as near to the field as she
could go ever since the first Bull Run. She saved my life, and I gave
it to her--what there was of it. She was a beautiful woman, indeed I
never saw a more beautiful--and she has a strange likeness to--but
that you shall see for yourself when you see her. She is getting a
little rest now, for she has been up all night attending to me. She
_will_ wait on me in spite