He
appeared to be quiet and sensible at sunrise, and his temperature
was a normal one. The morning after that, again, he seemed so
well that I left him with a fairish conscience on my return
journey for England. I want to tell you about that anxious night.
He gave himself away then. I don't think he remembered much
of what he had said next morning. It seemed sad to me his
self-revelation. He said he did not know what in the world to do,
he felt so ill and anxious. He was a Cockney born, and he had
loved his South London work. He really wanted to tackle the job in
front of him here. But the romance was there behind him in that
English city the unique sense of being in the right place the
great adventure the gleam.

Oh! why had he caught the fever? Not this fever, but the malaria
of Imperialism, and felt drawn to go so very far afield. He
didn't abuse the veld, the camping-out, the foot-slogging, the
primitive people. He was a very chivalrous person even in his
delirium.

But he spoke ecstatically of the streets, the tram-roads, the
lights of the town, the smartness of his flock, the delights of
their up-to-date humor.

The tragedy thickened. He told me of her who had promised to
marry him by Eastertide next year. Cecilia was her name.

She was a Londoner, and shared his views. 'Whatever will she
think of this place?' he asked. My eyes wandered to the iron
roof, to the floor-boarded walls, to the candle in a bottle that
fought the draught so bravely. He told me about a letter of hers
he had got by this mail. She had been working as a governess
these last few months at a country rectory in the Berkshire
moors. She found the village, and the neighborhood, and the life
there in general very flat indeed. They bored her; yet she was
keen, he said, on 'the work,' 'the work' as she had known it when
she worked for him in London. 'Whatever will she think of this
place?' he repeated. I looked at the floor, freshly treated with
cow-dung, and thought again for an answer, but I could think of
no very suitable one.

'I'll give you her letter to read,' he said, in a burst of
confidence. 'That puts it far more plainly than I can. My head's
so bad.' He looked worried, and I thought I had better leave him.

'No,' he said; 'do read to me a bit before you go.'

'What shall I read?'

He looked at me meditatively. 'You'll find something to the point
in there,' he said. He reached up to the little candle-box
bookcase over his he