By noon the fateful yellow flag was flying over the house , and all arrangements had been made . Caroline was to do the necessary cooking , and Charles was to bring the food and leave it in the yard . Old Giles Blewett was to come every day and attend to the stock , as well as help Eunice with the sick man ; and the long , hard fight with death began . It was a hard fight , indeed . Christopher Holland , in the clutches of the loathsome disease , was an object from which his nearest and dearest might have been pardoned for shrinking . But Eunice never faltered ; she never left her post . Sometimes she dozed in a chair by the bed , but she never lay down . Her endurance was something wonderful , her patience and tenderness almost superhuman . To and fro she went , in noiseless ministry , as the long , dreadful days wore away , with a quiet smile on her lips , and in her dark , sorrowful eyes the rapt look of a pictured saint in some dim cathedral niche . For her there was no world outside the bare room where lay the repulsive object she loved . One day the doctor looked very grave . He had grown well-hardened to pitiful scenes in his life-time ; but he shrunk from telling Eunice that her brother could not live . He had never seen such devotion as hers . It seemed brutal to tell her that it had been in vain . But Eunice had seen it for herself . She took it very calmly , the doctor thought . And she had her reward at last -- such as it was . She thought it amply sufficient . One night Christopher Holland opened his swollen eyes as she bent over him . They were alone in the old house .
It was raining outside , and the drops rattled noisily XXXXX the panes .
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