bility be here,
so far away from home, so utterly beyond the limits of his own
district?

The doctor had approached Benjamin and had pulled him back from the
bedside quickly, though not unkindly.

"What are you doing here, child?" he said. "Have we not enough upon
our hands without having sound persons mad enough to seek to add to
the numbers of the sick? Is he a relation of yours?

"Well, well, well, he will be looked after here better than you can
do it. Your brother? Well, he has been four days here, and is one
of those I have hope for. The tumours have discharged. He is
suffering now from weakness and fever; but he might get well,
especially if we could move him out of this pestilential air. Go
home, children, and tell your friends that if they have a place to
take him to he will not infect them now, and will have a better
chance. But you must not linger here. It may be death to you;
though it is true enough that many come seeking their friends who
go away and take no hurt. No one can say who is safe and who is
not. But get you gone, get you gone. Your brother shall be well
looked to, I say. We have none so many who recover that we can
afford to let those slip back for whom there is a chance!"

He had pushed the boys by this time into the garden, and was
speaking to them there. He was a kind man, if blunt, and habit had
not bred indifference in him to the sufferings of those about him.
He told the boys that one of the strangest features about the
plague patients was the rapid recovery they often made when once
the poison was discharged by the breaking of the swellings, and the
rapidity with which the infection ceased when these broken tumours
had healed. Reuben's case had seemed desperate enough when he was
brought in, but now he was in a fair way of recovery. If he could
be taken to better air, he would probably be a sound man quickly.
Even as he was, he might well recover.

The boys looked at each other and said with one voice that they
thought they knew of a house where he would be received, and got
leave to remove him in a cart at any time. The doctor then hurried
back to his work, whilst the brothers looked each other in the
face, and Benjamin said gravely:

"Methinks it must have been put into our hearts to go. Aunt Mary
will forgive the temerity when she hears of the special
Providence."

Their aunt was at no great distance off, as Benjamin knew. Instead
of going home, they found their way to a bro