d Gehazi last Tuesday that gave me a clue. I said I'd
never seen a case of leprosy, and your mother said she'd seen too many.'

'Where? She never told me,' Miss Henschil began.

'A few months before you were born--on her trip to Australia--at Mola or
Molo something or other. It took me three evenings to get it all out.'

'Ay--mother's suspicious of questions,' said Miss Henschil to Conroy.
'She'll lock the door of every room she's in, if it's but for five
minutes. She was a Tackberry from Jarrow way, yo' see.'

'She described your men to the life--men with faces all eaten away,
staring at her over the fence of a lepers' hospital in this Molo Island.
They begged from her, and she ran, she told me, all down the street,
back to the pier. One touched her and she nearly fainted. She's ashamed
of that still.'

'My men? The sand and the fences?' Miss Henschil muttered.

'Yes. You know how tidy she is and how she hates wind. She remembered
that the fences were broken--she remembered the wind blowing.
Sand--sun--salt wind--fences--faces--I got it all out of her, bit by
bit. You don't know what I know! And it all happened three or four
months before you were born. There!' Nurse Blaber slapped her knee with
her little hand triumphantly.

'Would that account for it?' Miss Henschil shook from head to foot.

'Absolutely. I don't care who you ask! You never imagined the thing. It
was _laid_ on you. It happened on earth to _you_! Quick, Mr. Conroy,
she's too heavy for me! I'll get the flask.'

Miss Henschil leaned forward and collapsed, as Conroy told her
afterwards, like a factory chimney. She came out of her swoon with teeth
that chattered on the cup.

'No--no,' she said, gulping. 'It's not hysterics. Yo' see I've no call
to hev 'em any more. No call--no reason whatever. God be praised! Can't
yo' _feel_ I'm a right woman now?'

'Stop hugging me!' said Nurse Blaber. 'You don't know your strength.
Finish the brandy and water. It's perfectly reasonable, and I'll lay
long odds Mr. Conroy's case is something of the same. I've been
thinking--'

'I wonder--' said Conroy, and pushed the girl back as she swayed again.

Nurse Blaber smoothed her pale hair. 'Yes. Your trouble, or something
like it, happened somewhere on earth or sea to the mother who bore you.
Ask her, child. Ask her and be done with it once for all.'

'I will,' said Conroy.... 'There ought to be--' He opened his bag and
hunted breathlessly.

'Bless you! Oh, G