aise the sand and fling it in blinding showers on to the
unlucky travellers, water-holes had dried to mud puddles, and the broad
lagoons, beloved of waterfowl, were thickets of wilted reeds, with never
a trace of moisture to be found anywhere.

The travellers pressed on as fast as they could go, for who could tell
what grim tragedies were taking place in Latimer since the two had
ridden forth to find a doctor? There were stories of whole townships
having been wiped out in ten days or a fortnight by smallpox, when no
doctor had been forthcoming to tend the patients and insist on isolation
and sanitation, with all the other precautions that belong to law and
order.

"There are only eight hundred people all told in Latimer, and we may
easily find half of them dead," said one man, with a pant of hurry in
his voice, as the tired horses toiled up the last long hill into
Latimer.

"But how many sick did you say there were when you left the town on the
day before yesterday?" asked the doctor, who privately believed the men
to be panic-stricken.

"There were two that had spots, and then there was that prospector who
came in from the track across the sandy plain. He dropped like a felled
ox in front of Jowett's saloon, and so they took him in there, because
Jowett had a bed to spare and there was not another in the township,"
said the other man, who was tall and gaunt, and only about half as
frightened as his companion, who was a small fat man with a tendency to
profuse perspiration.

"Had he--this prospector, I mean--any spots on him also?" asked the
doctor, frowning heavily. He had had more than one fight with smallpox
in mining camps, and he knew by sad experience that the terror was worse
to combat than the disease.

"I don't know. Folks were too scared to look, I fancy; but old Mother
Twiney, who doesn't seem to be afraid of anything, said that she would
see that he had food and drink until we got back, and Jowett will let
the man have houseroom, for the simple reason that he is afraid to turn
him out," returned the tall man.

Fully half the population of Latimer gathered to welcome the doctor when
at last he rode up to the open space in front of Jowett's saloon, and
half of these demanded that their tongues should be looked at and their
pulses felt without delay.

But the doctor had always been impatient of shams; indeed more than one
candid friend had told him that in this matter he had done himself much
harm fr