s may be chock full of the
leprosy bacilli."

"Then you or I, for all we know," I suggested, "may be full of it now."

Kersdale shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

"Who can say? It takes seven years for it to incubate. If you have any
doubts go and see Doctor Hervey. He'll just snip out a piece of your
skin and let you know in a jiffy."

Later on he introduced me to Dr. Hervey, who loaded me down with Board of
Health reports and pamphlets on the subject, and took me out to Kalihi,
the Honolulu receiving station, where suspects were examined and
confirmed lepers were held for deportation to Molokai. These
deportations occurred about once a month, when, the last good-byes said,
the lepers were marched on board the little steamer, the _Noeau_, and
carried down to the settlement.

One afternoon, writing letters at the club, Jack Kersdale dropped in on
me.

"Just the man I want to see," was his greeting. "I'll show you the
saddest aspect of the whole situation--the lepers wailing as they depart
for Molokai. The _Noeau_ will be taking them on board in a few minutes.
But let me warn you not to let your feelings be harrowed. Real as their
grief is, they'd wail a whole sight harder a year hence if the Board of
Health tried to take them away from Molokai. We've just time for a
whiskey and soda. I've a carriage outside. It won't take us five
minutes to get down to the wharf."

To the wharf we drove. Some forty sad wretches, amid their mats,
blankets, and luggage of various sorts, were squatting on the stringer
piece. The Noeau had just arrived and was making fast to a lighter that
lay between her and the wharf. A Mr. McVeigh, the superintendent of the
settlement, was overseeing the embarkation, and to him I was introduced,
also to Dr. Georges, one of the Board of Health physicians whom I had
already met at Kalihi. The lepers were a woebegone lot. The faces of
the majority were hideous--too horrible for me to describe. But here and
there I noticed fairly good-looking persons, with no apparent signs of
the fell disease upon them. One, I noticed, a little white girl, not
more than twelve, with blue eyes and golden hair. One cheek, however,
showed the leprous bloat. On my remarking on the sadness of her alien
situation among the brown-skinned afflicted ones, Doctor Georges
replied:--

"Oh, I don't know. It's a happy day in her life. She comes from Kauai.
Her father is a brute. And now that she has deve