cial fear.
Ah! quite inexplicable nonsense!--fears like mine about bats, or your
aunt's about dogs, but also fears that make a man afraid that he will not
face a danger that is a duty. When we had smallpox at the mills, soon
after Rivers came here, he went to the mill-town and lived there a month,
and nursed the sick and buried the dead. At last he took the disease
lightly, but it left a mark or two on his forehead. That I call--well,
heroic. Confound that rocking-chair! How it squeaks!"

John was too intently listening to hear anything but the speaker who
declared heroic the long lean man with the pale face and the eyes like
search-lights. John waited; he wanted to hear something more.

"Did many die, uncle?"

"Oh, yes. The men had fought McGregor about vaccination. Many died. There
was blindness too. Supplies failed--no one would come in from the farms."

John waited with the fear of defect in his ideal man. Then he ventured,
"And Aunt Ann, was she here?"

"No, I sent her away when I went to Milltown."

"Oh! you were there too, sir?"

"Yes, damn it!" He rarely swore at all. "Where did you suppose I would
be? But I lived in terror for a month--oh, in deadly fear!"

"Thank you, sir."

"Thank me, what for? Some forms of sudden danger make me gay, with all my
faculties at their best, but not that. I had to nurse Rivers; that was
the worst of it. You see, my son, I was a coward."

"I should like to be your kind of a coward, Uncle Jim."

"Well, it was awful. Let us talk of something else. I left your aunt
better, went to Washington, saw our Congressman, got your nomination to
West Point and a letter from Leila. Your aunt must be fast mending, for
she was making a long list of furniture for the new parsonage, and 'would
I see Ellen Lamb and'--eleven other things, the Lord knows what else,
and 'when could she return?' McGregor said in September, and I so wrote
to her; she will hate it. And she dislikes your going to West Point. I
had to tell her, of course."

"I have had a letter from Leila, uncle. Did she write you anything about
Josiah?"

"About Josiah! No. What was that?"

"She said I was not to tell, but I think you ought to know--"

"Of course, I should know. Go on. Let me see the letter."

"It is upstairs, sir, but this is what she wrote," and he went on to tell
the story.

The Squire laughed. "I must let Mr. Johnson know, as Leila did not know,
that it was Ann who really sent you to warn him. Poor