Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/403

 But spite of the urgency of Mr Curtis, and the advice of the minister, still, every time that she pressed our boy to her bosom, the image of her lost husband rose up before her, and something said in her heart, He lives! He loves you! Do not give him up!

So things went on for a year or more, Mr. Curtis still patiently waiting the effects of time and perseverance, when he was seized by a violent attack of yellow fever, which brought him to death's door, and from which he recovered only after a tedious and protracted convalescence. It was now Cassy's turn to show her sense of the kindness and delicacy with which she had been treated, and of the favor with which her master had regarded her. Night and day she was his constant and most assiduous nurse; and the physicians, of whom, at different times, three or four had been called in, all agreed that it was nothing but her tender care — all that a sister, a mother, a wife could have bestowed — to which he was indebted for his life.

Having been religiously educated:in his childhood, the near prospect of death, and the leisure and solitude of his tedious and painful recovery, served to recall many ideas which the tumult of business, the gayety of youth, the gross, sensual, worldly atmosphere in which he had so long lived, had well nigh extinguished. It was plain, indeed, that Mr Curtis rose from his sick bed — whether from the effect of physical or moral causes, or of both combined — in many respects an altered man; as if, indeed, twenty years or more had suddenly been added to his age: not less amiable or genial, but graver, and with thoughts less bent on himself; though he could never, at any time, have been accused of being a selfish man.

One of the first things he did, when he was recovered enough to sit up, was to execute a duplicate deed of manumission for Cassy and her child, to go into effect as soon as the law would allow, she meanwhile to superintend his household, receiving a certain