m would allow.

"Well," said Paul curtly, almost roughly, "I hear you are in trouble in
the village."

"The cholera has come, Excellency."

"Many deaths?"

"To-day--eleven."

Paul looked up sharply.

"And the doctor?"

"He has not come yet, Excellency. I sent for him--a fortnight ago. The
cholera is at Oseff, at Dolja, at Kalisheffa. It is everywhere. He has
forty thousand souls under his care. He has to obey the Zemstvo, to go
where they tell him. He takes no notice of me."

"Yes," interrupted Paul, "I know. And the people themselves, do they
attempt to understand it--to follow out my instructions?"

The starosta spread out his thin hands in deprecation. He cringed a
little as he stood. He had Jewish blood in his veins, which, while it
raised him above his fellows in Osterno, carried with it the usual
tendency to cringe. It is in the blood; it is part of what the people
who stood without Pilate's palace took upon themselves and upon their
children.

"Your Excellency," he said, "knows what they are. It is slow. They make
no progress. For them one disease is as another. 'Bog dal e Bog vzial,'
they say. 'God gave and God took!'"

He paused, his black eyes flashing from one face to the other.

"Only the Moscow doctor, Excellency," he said significantly, "can manage
them."

Paul shrugged his shoulders. He rose from his seat, glancing at
Steinmetz, who was looking on in silence, with his queer, mocking smile.

"I will go with you now," he said. "It is late enough already."

The starosta bowed very low, but he said nothing.

Paul went to a cupboard and took from it an old fur coat, dragged at the
seams, stained about the cuffs a dull brown--doctors know the color.
Such stains have hanged a man before now, for they are the marks of
blood. Paul put on this coat. He took a long, soft silken scarf such as
Russians wear in winter, and wrapped it round his throat, quite
concealing the lower part of his face. He crammed a fur cap down over
his ears.

"Come," he said.

Karl Steinmetz accompanied them down stairs, carrying a lamp in one
hand. He closed the door behind them, but did not lock it. Then he went
upstairs again to the quiet little room, where he sat down in a deep
chair. He looked at the open door of the cupboard from which Paul Alexis
had taken his simple disguise, with a large, tolerant humor.

"El Senor Don Quixote de la Mancha," he said sleepily.

It is said that to a doctor nothing is shockin