om a professional point of view, as a doctor who wants to get on
can do it most quickly by trading upon the fears of the foolish.

Pushing the candidates for examination to right and left as he went, he
sternly demanded to be taken at once to the sick--those who had the
dreaded spots most fully developed--and, as he was not a man to be
gainsaid or put aside, old Mother Twiney was at once pushed forward to
take him to the patients.

Snuffy and dirty though the old crone was, there was a gleam of true
kindliness in her eyes hidden away behind bushy grey eyelashes, and she
hobbled off in a great hurry to a wooden building standing remote from
the houses, and which had formerly been used as a store for mining
plant.

"Are all the patients here?" asked the doctor, as he followed her across
the parched and dusty grass.

"All but the man who was taken into Jowett's, your honour," she
answered; then, sidling a little closer to him, she said in an
undertone: "It is not smallpox at all; I am quite sure of it. Why, the
two men are not even ill, only nearly scared to death."

"Then why was I sent for such a long way, and for nothing too?" he asked
angrily, knowing well that his fee would be according to the need there
was for his services.

"Hush!" breathed the old woman, and now there was keen anxiety in her
manner. "Whatever you do, don't let anyone know for a few days that it
is not smallpox. These men are not ill, and the spots are only a sort of
heat rash, I think, but the poor fellow at Jowett's is real bad, and he
would have died if he could not have had a doctor. He may even die now,
in spite of all you can do. I knew that no one in the town would send
for a doctor to come so far on account of a man who was ill from a
complaint that was not infectious, so when I saw the other two with the
spots, I just made the most of it, and because all the well people were
afraid that they would catch the disease, there was no time lost in
sending for you. Now you must just put them into strict quarantine, and
make as much fuss as possible; then they will let you stay here long
enough to pull the poor fellow round who is lying at Jowett's, and they
will pay you according to the trouble you put them to," said the old
woman, with a sagacious nod of her head.

The doctor frowned, but there was sound reason in her arguments, and he
decided to see all the patients before committing himself to any course
of action concerning them.

T