hin; and, having bathed and cleanly
dressed, went out.

He went out beyond the town to the hut where Scip the boatman lived.
Scip was at home. He lived quite alone. His father, his mother and
four brothers had died of the plague since June. He started when he
saw Hope, and his habitual look of fear deepened to a craven terror;
he would rather have had the yellow fever than to have seen the
Northern nurse just then. But Zerviah sat down by him on the hot sand,
beside a rather ghastly palmetto that grew there, and spoke to him
very gently. He said:

"The _Mercy_ came in last night, Scip.--I know. And you rowed down for
the supplies. You heard something about me on board the _Mercy_. Tell
me, Scip."

"He's a durn fool," said Scip, with a dull show of passion.

"Who is a durn fool?"

"That dem mate."

"So it was the mate? Yes. What did he say, Scip?"

"I never done believe it," urged Scip, with an air of suddenly
recollected virtue.

"But you told of it, Scip."

"I never told nobody but Jupiter, the durn fool!" persisted Scip.

"Who is Jupiter?"

"Doctor Remane's Jupiter, him that holds his hoss, that he brung up
from the fever. He said he wouldn't tell. I never done believe it,
_never_!"

"It seems to me, Scip," said Zerviah, in a low, kind voice, "that I
wouldn't have told if I'd been you. But never mind."

"I never done mean to hurt you!" cried Scip, following him into the
road. "Jupiter the durn, he said he'd never tell. I never told nobody
else."

"You have told the whole town," said Zerviah Hope, patiently. "I'm
sorry, but never mind."

He stood for a moment looking across the stark palmetto, over the
dusty stretch of road, across the glare, to the town. His eyes blinded
and filled.

"It wouldn't have been a great while," he said. "I wish you hadn't,
Scip, but never mind!"

He shook the negro gently off, as if he had been a child. There was
nothing more to say. He would go back to his work. As he walked along,
he suddenly said to himself:

"She did not smile this morning! Nor the lady at the telegraph office,
either. Nor--a good many other folks. I remember now.... Lord!" he
added aloud, thought breaking into one of his half-unconscious
prayers, which had the more pathos because it began with the rude
abruptness of an apparent oath,--"Lord! what in the name of heaven am
I going to do about it?"

Now, as he was coming into the little city, with bowed head and broken
face, he met Doctor Dare