While I was taking my broth the worthy medico stepped to where Nugent was lying and bent over the poor fellow, feeling his pulse and watching his white, pain-drawn face.  Then, rising softly, he went into a dark corner of the tent, where, it appeared, his medicine-chest was stowed away, and quickly prepared a draught, which he brought and held to the lips of the patient, tenderly raising the head of the latter to enable him to drink it.  Then, having replaced the sufferer's head upon the makeshift pillow, he bent over and murmured a few words in the dying man's ear.  What they were I know not, nor did I catch Nugent's response, but the effect of the brief colloquy was that Hutchinson drew from his pocket a small copy of the New Testament and, after glancing here and there at its opened pages, finally began to read, in a clear voice and very impressively, the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, reading it through to the end.  As he proceeded I saw poor Nugent slowly and painfully draw up his hands, that had lain clenched upon the sand beside him, until they were folded upon his breast in the attitude of prayer.  And when at length Hutchinson, with a steady voice, but with the tears trickling down his cheeks, reached the passage, "But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory," Nugent's lips began to move as though he were silently repeating the words.  The chapter ended, Hutchinson remained silent for a few moments, regarding his patient, who he evidently believed was praying.  Suddenly Nugent's eyes opened wide, and he stared up in surprise at the canvas roof over his head as though he beheld some wonderful sight; the colour flowed back into his cheeks and lips, and gradually his face became illumined with a smile of ecstatic joy.