suggested. ''Tis barely seven mile up the road.'

'But the plague was here,' Mr. Culpeper answered, and pointed up the
hill. 'What else could I have done?'

'What were the parson's children called?' said Una.

'Elizabeth, Alison, Stephen, and Charles--a babe. I scarce saw them at
first, for I separated to live with their father in a cart-lodge. The
mother we put--forced--into the house with her babes. She had done
enough.

'And now, good people, give me leave to be particular in this case. The
plague was worst on the north side of the street, for lack, as I showed
'em, of sunshine; which, proceeding from the _primum mobile_, or source
of life (I speak astrologically), is cleansing and purifying in the
highest degree. The plague was hot too by the corn-chandler's, where
they sell forage to the carters; extreme hot in both Mills along the
river, and scatteringly in other places, _except_, mark you, at the
smithy. Mark here, that all forges and smith-shops belong to Mars, even
as corn and meat and wine-shops acknowledge Venus for their mistress.
There was no plague in the smithy at Munday's Lane----'

'Munday's Lane? You mean our village? I thought so when you talked about
the two Mills,' cried Dan. 'Where did we put the plague-stone? I'd like
to have seen it.'

'Then look at it now,' said Puck, and pointed to the chickens'
drinking-trough where they had set their bicycle lamps. It was a rough,
oblong stone pan, rather like a small kitchen sink, which Phillips, who
never wastes anything, had found in a ditch and had used for his
precious hens.

'That?' said Dan and Una, and stared, and stared, and stared.

Mr. Culpeper made impatient noises in his throat and went on.

'I am at these pains to be particular, good people, because I would have
you follow, so far as you may, the operations of my mind. That plague
which I told you I had handled outside Wallingford in Oxfordshire was of
a watery nature, conformable to the brookish riverine country it bred
in, and curable, as I have said, by drenching in water. This plague of
ours here, for all that it flourished along watercourses--every soul at
both Mills died of it,--could not be so handled. Which brought me to a
stand. Ahem!'

'And your sick people in the meantime?' Puck demanded.

'We persuaded them on the north side of the street to lie out in
Hitheram's field. Where the plague had taken one, or at most two, in a
house, folk would not shift for fear of thieves