to
them. They wanted to get through the cells to the lymph-passages,
thence on to the brain and spinal marrow. Know what that means?
Hydrophobia."

"What's that?"

"Oh, say, now! You're too easy."

"Come, come," said the other, good-naturedly; "don't guy him. He never
had our advantages. You see, neighbor, we get these points from the
subjective brain, which knows all things and gives us our instructions.
We're the white corpuscles,--phagocytes, the scientists call us,--and
our work is to police the blood-vessels, and kill off invaders that
make trouble. Those red-and-gray chumps can't take care of themselves,
and we must protect 'em. Understand? But this invasion was too much for
us, and we had to have help from outside. You must have come in with
the first crowd--think I saw you--in at the bite. Second crowd came in
through an inoculation tube, and just in time to pull you through."

"I don't know," answered our bewildered friend. "In at the bite? What
bite? I was swimming round comfortable-like, and there was a big noise,
and then I was alongside of a big white wall, and then----"

"Exactly; the dog's tooth. You got into bad company, friend, and you're
well out of it. That first gang is the microbe of rabies, not very well
known yet, because a little too small to be seen by most microscopes.
All the scientists seem to have learned about 'em is that a colony a
few hundred generations old--which they call a culture, or serum--is
death on the original bird; and that's what they sent in to help out.
Pasteur's dead, worse luck, but sometime old Koch'll find out what
we've known all along--that it's only variation from type."

"Koch!" he answered eagerly and proudly. "Oh, I know Koch; I've met
him. And I know about microscopes, too. Why, Koch had me under his
microscope once. He discovered my family, and named us--the comma
bacilli--the Spirilli of Asiatic Cholera."

In silent horror they drew away from him, and then conversed together.
Other white warriors drifting along stopped and joined the conference,
and when a hundred or more were massed before him, they spread out to a
semi-spherical formation and closed in.

"What's the matter?" he asked nervously. "What's wrong? What are you
going to do? I haven't done anything, have I?"

"It's not what you've done, stranger," said his quondam friend, "or
what we're going to do. It's what you're going to do. You're going to
die. Don't see how you got past quarantine,