double error--"I wuz asked to fetch this here letter to you. It wuz
giv to me by a black feller who's a nussin' in the little hospital. A
young man guv it to him last night, and promised to give him his gold
watch ef he'd find you out and git it to yer."

"Hospital--young man--gold watch!" ejaculated Agnes in a disjointed
way, as she took the letter.

A glance at the handwriting was sufficient, and her face grew deadly
white as she opened and read:

"Agnes--Angel Agnes, I hear they call you--and they may well call you
that--darling, I found out the trick by which we were estranged. I was
foolish, I was wrong to treat you so. And when I learned you had come
here into this pest-hole, I was crazy with anxiety for fear you would
take the fever and die. I did not know how I _did_ love you till
then. God forgive me, guilty wretch that I am, for driving you to such
a desperate piece of romance. I came here to tell you how sorry I was,
and to ask you to take me bask to my old place in your heart. But now
I am afraid it is too late. I have been hanging around the town a week
or longer, trying to get in on some train. Not succeeding in my object
this way, I have been obliged to walk in by night, concealing myself
in the daytime, and walking forward again in the darkness. Thus I have
eluded them, and got in. But so far I have been unable to find you,
and now I fear it too late, for I am sick with the fever in the
hospital.

"I have given myself up to die, for they are not especially kind or
attentive to me, as they think I ought to have stayed away, and not
come in and added to their labors, as they have more of their own sick