y the torrent
of his reproaches.... "How dare you take the information I give you and
use it to betray your fellow-man! How do you _dare_ stand there, so
mealy-mouthed, and face me, when you are planning a cowardly attack on the
liberty of your country! You call yourself a nurse ... what would you
think of a mother who hid an ulcer in her child's side from the doctor
because it did not look pretty! What _else_ are you planning to do? What
would you think of a nurse who put paint and powder on her patient's face,
to cover up a filthy skin disease? What else are you planning to
do ... you with your plan to put court-plaster over one pustule in ten
million and thinking you are helping cure the patient! You are planning
simply to please yourself, you cowardly ... and you are an idiot too ..."
he beat his hands on the door-jambs, "... if you had the money of forty
millionaires, you couldn't do anything in that way ... how many people are
you thinking to help ... two, three ... maybe four! But there are hundreds
of others ... why, I could read you a thousand stories of worse--"

Cousin Tryphena's limit had been reached. She advanced upon the intruder
with a face as excited as his own. ... "Jombatiste Ramotte, if you ever
dare to read me another such story, I'll go right out and jump in the
Necronsett River!"

The mania which had haunted earlier generations of her family looked out
luridly from her eyes.

I felt the goose-flesh stand out on my arms, and even Jombatiste's hot
blood was cooled. He stood silent an instant.

Cousin Tryphena slammed the door in his face.

He turned to me with a bewilderment almost pathetic so tremendous was
it--"Did you hear that ... what sort of logic do you call--"

"Jombatiste," I counseled him, "if you take my advice you'll leave Miss
Tryphena alone after this."

Cousin Tryphena started off on her crack-brained expedition, the very next
morning, on the six-thirty train. I happened to be looking out sleepily
and saw her trudging wearily past our house in the bleak gray of our
mountain dawn, the inadequate little, yellow flame of her old fashioned
lantern like a glowworm at her side. It seemed somehow symbolical of
something, I did not know what.

It was a full week before we heard from her, and we had begun really to
fear that we would never see her again, thinking that perhaps, while she
was among strangers, her unsettled mind might have taken some new fancy
which would be her destruct