lympia with a perturbed air,
and, beckoning her into the dressing-room, said:

"Miss Sprague, this is no place for you. Miss Boone has every symptom of
typhoid fever. She has evidently been exposed to a malarial air. Her
complaint may be even worse than typhoid--I can't quite make out certain
whitish blotches on her skin. I should suspect small-pox or varioloid,
but that there has not been a case reported here for years. Where has
she been of late?"

Olympia turned ghastly white with horror.

"O doctor, she has been nursing Jack, who was for weeks in the small-pox
ward at Point Lookout!"

"Good God! Fly, fly the house at once! I wondered if I could be deceived
in the symptoms. I must insist on your leaving at once."

"But the poor girl must have some one of her own sex with her. Whom can
she get if not a friend?"

"She can get a professional nurse, and that is worth a dozen friends.
Indeed, friends will be only a drawback for the next ten days."

He took her gently by the shoulders and pushed her out of the room. He
was an old friend of the family, and she was accustomed to his
tyrannical ways. He held her sternly under way until the front door
closed and shut her out. Then, turning into the library, he saw that the
host was alone. Closing the door, he said:

"Mr. Boone, your daughter has been exposed to a great danger. We may be
able to save her, but it will require great patience."

"Danger, doctor! What do you mean?"

"Your daughter has caught the most hideous of all diseases--small-pox!"

Elisha Boone started to his feet. "Great God! where could she catch
small-pox?"

"She caught it nursing young Sprague. I thought you knew of that;" and
the doctor regarded the incredulous, terror-stricken face of the father
with bewildered fixity. Well he might. The first rod of the moral law
had just struck him. The vengeance he had so subtly planned had turned
into retributive justice. He had refused Kate's prayer; he had driven
her to this mad search and the contagion now periling her life, or, if
it were spared, leaving her a hideous specter of herself. This passed
through his shattered mind as the doctor stood regarding him.

"What do you propose doing?" he finally asked, to get his thoughts from
the torturing grip of conscience.

"I propose to install two trained nurses in the house. You are not to
let a soul know what your daughter is suffering from. I hope to be able
to check the evil in the blood, but I mu