rs to listen, she caught the words, all jumbled
together though they were.

"Boss got smallpox!"

She saw Curtis stop dead, and she wondered if his heart, like hers, had
ceased to beat. The next instant he moved forward, and for the first
time she saw him deliberately punch the gesticulating negro's woolly
head. Beelzebub cried out like a whipped dog and slunk back. Then, very
calmly, Curtis took him by the scruff of his neck, and began to question
him.

Sybil stood, gripping the curtain, and watched it all as one watches a
scene on the stage. Somehow, though she knew herself to be vitally
concerned, she felt no agitation. It was as if the blood had ceased to
run in her veins.

At length she saw Curtis release the palpitating Beelzebub, and turn
towards the house. Quite calmly she also turned.

They met in the passage.

"You needn't trouble to keep it from me," she said. "I know."

He gave her a keen look.

"I am going to him at once," was all he said.

She stood quite still, facing him; and suddenly she was conscious of a
great glow pulsing through her, as though some arrested force had been
set free. She knew that her heart was beating again, strongly, steadily,
fearlessly.

"I shall come with you," she said.

She saw his face change.

"I am sorry," he said, "but that is out of the question. You must know
it."

She answered him instantly, unhesitatingly, with some of the old, quick
spirit that had won Brett Mercer's heart.

"There you are wrong. I know it to be the only thing possible for me to
do."

Curtis looked at her for a second as if he scarcely knew her, and then
abruptly abandoned the argument.

"I will not be responsible," he said, turning aside.

And she answered him unfalteringly:

"I will take the responsibility."

XVIII

Slowly Brett Mercer raised himself and tried to peer through his swollen
eyelids at the door.

"Don't bring any woman here!" he mumbled.

The effort to see was fruitless. He sank back, blind and tortured, upon
the pillow. He had been taken ill at one of his own outlying farms, and
here he had lain for days--a giant bereft of his strength, waiting for
death.

His only attendant was a farm-hand who had had the disease, but knew
nothing of its treatment, who was, moreover, afraid to go near him.

Curtis took in the whole situation at a glance as he bent over him.

"Why didn't you send for me?" he said.

"That you?" gasped Mercer. "Man, I'm in hell! Can'