, perhaps, be aware, Mr. Elsmere,' he said, endeavouring to
speak with all his old hauteur, while his heavy lips twitched nervously,
'that, for one reason and another, I knew nothing of the epidemic here
till yesterday, when Meyrick told me.'

'I heard from Mr. Meyrick that it was so. As you are here now, Mr.
Wendover, and I am in no great hurry to get home, may I take you through
and show you the people?'

The squire at last looked at him straight--at the face worn and pale,
yet still so extraordinarily youthful, in which something of the
solemnity and high emotion of the night seemed to be still lingering.

'Are you just come?' he said abruptly, 'or are you going back?'

'I have been here through the night, sitting up with one of the fever
cases. It's hard work for the nurses, and the relations sometimes,
without help.'

The squire moved on mechanically towards the village, and Robert moved
beside him.

'And Mrs. Elsmere?'

'Mrs. Elsmere was here most of yesterday. She used to stay the night
when the diphtheria was at its worst; but there are only four anxious
cases left--the rest all convalescent.'

The squire said no more, and they turned into the lane, where the ice
lay thick in the deep ruts, and on either hand curls of smoke rose into
the clear cold sky. The squire looked about him with eyes which no
detail escaped. Robert, without a word of comment, pointed out this
feature and that, showed where Henslowe had begun repairs, where the new
well was to be, what the water supply had been till now, drew the
squire's attention to the roofs, the pigstyes, the drainage, or rather
complete absence of drainage, and all in the dry voice of some one going
through a catalogue. Word had already fled like wildfire through the
hamlet that the squire was there. Children and adults, a pale emaciated
crew, poured out into the wintry air to look. The squire knit his brows
with annoyance as the little crowd in the lane grew. Robert took no
notice.

Presently he pushed open the door of the house where he had spent the
night. In the kitchen a girl of sixteen was clearing away the various
nondescript heaps on which the family had slept, and was preparing
breakfast. The squire looked at the floor.

'I thought I understood from Henslowe,' he muttered, as though to
himself, 'that there were no mud floors left on the estate----'

'There are only three houses in Mile End without them,' said Robert,
catching what he said.

Th