e came out carrying a pail, evidently on her
way to fetch water from a stream which flowed by the roadside and here
and there widened into a little well.

She was close to me before she saw me. When she did at last catch sight
of me I was amazed at the swift change in the expression of her face. It
had been moody enough when I had had time to observe it in repose. Now
something of fear, of horror, leaped into it.

"Go back at once, Miss Bawn, for God's sake!" she cried. "Go back, and
don't be coming near me. There's small-pox in the village and I've been
in and out with them. Half the village is sickening for it; the doctor's
distracted. He's sent word up to Dublin to send nurses and doctors.
Thank God, I was able to turn you back. Go home, Miss Bawn, and come
here no more."

"And what are you going to do, Nora?" I asked.

"Is it me, Miss Bawn? Sure, I'll stay where I am. I've been in and out
with them; and if I'm to get it, I'll get it. Ask some one to take the
children away. Then I'll be able to help with the nursing. Maybe 'tis
what God meant for me."

We stood and looked at each other across the space. Why, it was what I
had desired, that my face should be marred, so that Richard Dawson would
turn away from me in disgust. For a moment I had an impulse to cross the
line she had set for me, to go as she had gone into infected places.
Perhaps she read the thought in my face, for she cried out to me to go
away, to remember those who depended on me for happiness and go. She
wrung her hands when I did not go.

"Go away, for God's sake," she cried again, "and don't have the face
_he_ cares about destroyed with the small-pox! See now, Miss Bawn,
darling, what would his Lordship and her Ladyship do without you?"

But while she coaxed me with their names I could see that she dreaded
the small-pox for me lest my face should be spoilt for Richard Dawson,
and I thought it one of the greatest things I had known in the heart of
a woman.

CHAPTER XXX

THE DARK DAYS

I remember the weeks after that like a bad dream. The small-pox had
spread from Araglin to other villages and to the isolated cabins. No one
knew where it had come from, or where it would go next, for it spread
like wildfire. And the doctors and nurses had come down from Dublin in a
cheerful little band and were fighting it heroically. For some weeks
there were only new outbreaks to tell of. For some weeks there were
panic and terror everywhere.