hat the one at
Jowett's was certainly not smallpox whatever the other two might be, but
some people won't be convinced, try how you will. So when the doctor's
back was turned it is supposed that someone, either by accident or
design, set the place on fire where the sick man was lying. In a drought
such as we are having now you may guess how the place burned. The doctor
happened to catch sight of it starting; but though he ran at the top of
his speed, all that he could do was to get there in time to see the
place one mass of fire, and he might easily have been forgiven if he had
turned his back on it then. He is made of brave stuff, though, and they
said he dashed straight into that blazing place, and, with the flames
and smoke all around him, he brought his patient out in the nick of
time, for the whole show collapsed just as he got to the doorway, the
sheets of red-hot corrugated roofing fell down upon him, and he was so
badly burned that someone will have to go and find a doctor to cure up
the one we've got, for I'm thinking that Latimer won't let a hero of
that sort die without making an attempt to save him."

"I am a doctor; I can look after him. Just lead on, and show me where he
is, will you, please?" said young Dr. Plumstead brusquely. He would
have spared Nealie the ugly story if he could, but on the whole it was
good for her to hear that her father had played the part of a hero. If
he had only known it, the hearing was good for him too, for he had been
very ready to despise the man who had given up his practice in
Hammerville and rushed away because he had not the moral courage to live
down a scandal. He had despised Nealie's father, too, because of his
treatment of his children, and altogether had decided that the poor man
was very much of a detrimental, so that this story of heroism had a
mighty effect on him as he walked by the side of the loquacious person
who had first given them the news; while Nealie sat perched up in the
cart behind, straining her ears to catch what they were saying, and
feeling so thankful that she had insisted on coming all the way that she
could have shouted with joyfulness in spite of her anxiety.

The man told Dr. Plumstead that the fire had spread from building to
building with such awful rapidity that it had been as much as anyone
could do to get the people out of their houses, so many of them having
gone to bed when the outbreak started.

"What about the smallpox patients?" as