"Me--Mr. Meeson," answered a voice. "Can I come in?"

"Yes; if you like," said Augusta, sharply, though in her heart she was
really glad to see him, or, rather, to hear him, for it was too dark to
see anything. It is wonderful how, under the pressure of a great
calamity, we forget our quarrels and our spites, and are ready to jump at
the prospect of the human companionship of our deadliest enemy. And "the
moral of that is," as the White Queen says, that as we are all night and
day face to face with the last dread calamity--Death--we should
throughout our lives behave as though we saw the present shadow of his
hand. But that will never happen in the world while human nature is human
nature--and when will it become anything else?

"Put up the door again," said Augusta, when, from a rather rawer rush of
air than usual, she gathered that her visitor was within the hut.

Mr. Meeson obeyed, groaning audibly. "Those two brutes are getting
drunk," he said, "swallowing down rum by the gallon. I have come because
I could not stop with them any longer--and I am so ill, Miss Smithers, so
ill! I believe that I am going to die. Sometimes I feel as though all the
marrow in my bones were ice, and--and--at others just as though somebody
were shoving a red-hot wire up them. Can't you do anything for me?"

"I don't see what is to be done," answered Augusta, gently, for the
man's misery touched her in spite of her dislike for him. "You had better
lie down and try to go to sleep."

"To sleep!" he moaned; "how can I sleep? My blanket is wringing wet
and my clothes are damp," and he fairly broke down and began to
groan and sob.