id not want him either
in Heaven--or in the other place."

"Oh," said I, "I thought that you were going to use a little tact with
Pap Spooner."

* * * * *

Next morning, early, we had a meeting in the store. A young doctor, a
capital fellow, had come out from San Lorenzo with the intention of
camping with us till the disease was wiped out; but he shook his head
very solemnly when someone suggested that the first case, carefully
isolated, might prove the last.

There were two fresh cases that night!

I shall not attempt to describe the horrors that filled the next three
weeks. But, not for the first time, I was struck by the heroism and
self-sacrifice of these rude foothill folk, whose great qualities
shine brightest in the dark hours of adversity. My brother and I had
passed through the big boom, when our part of California had become of
a sudden a Tom Tiddler's ground, where the youngest and simplest could
pick up gold and silver. We had seen our county drunk with prosperity
--drunk and disorderly. And we had seen also these same revellers
chastened by low prices, dry seasons, and commercial stagnation. But
we had yet to witness the crowning sobering effect of a raging
pestilence.

The little schoolmarm, Alethea-Belle Buchanan, organised the women
into a staff of nurses. Mrs. Dumble enrolled herself amongst the band.
Did she take comfort in the thought that she was wiping out John Jacob
Dumble's innumerable rogueries? Let us hope so.

Within a week yellow bunting waved from half a score of cottages in
and about Paradise. And then, one heavenly morning, as we were riding
into the village, we saw the hideous warning fluttering outside George
Leadham's door.

Sissy was down with it!

Poor George, his brown, weather-beaten face seamed with misery, met us
at the garden gate.

"She's awful bad," he muttered, "an' the doc. says she'll be worse
afore she's better."

Next door a man was digging two graves in his garden.

Meantime, Pap Spooner had disappeared. We heard that he had gone to a
mountain ranch of his about fifteen miles away. Nobody missed him;
nobody cared whether he went or stayed. In the village store it was
conceded that Pap's room, rain or shine, was better than his company.
His name was never mentioned till it began to fall from Sissy
Leadham's delirious lips.

The schoolmarm first told me that the child was asking for Andrew
Spooner, moaning, wailing, shrieking for "p