And of that night's wrestle he said not a word to any living soul. He
did penance for it in the tenderest, most secret ways, but he shrank in
misery from the thought of revealing it even to Catherine.

CHAPTER XXI.

Meanwhile the poor poisoned folk at Mile End lived and apparently
throve, in defiance of all the laws of the universe. Robert, as soon as
he found that radical measures were for the time hopeless, had applied
himself with redoubled energy to making the people use such palliatives
as were within their reach, and had preached boiled water and the
removal of filth till, as he declared to Catherine, his dreams were one
long sanitary nightmare. But he was not confiding enough to believe that
the people paid much heed, and he hoped more from a dry hard winter than
from any exertion either of his or theirs.

But, alas! with the end of November a season of furious rain set in.

Then Robert began to watch Mile End with anxiety, for so far every
outbreak of illness there had followed upon unusual damp. But the rains
passed leaving behind them no worse result than the usual winter crop of
lung ailments and rheumatism, and he breathed again.

Christmas came and went, and with the end of December the wet weather
returned. Day after day rolling masses of southwest cloud came up from
the Atlantic and wrapped the whole country in rain, which reminded
Catherine of her Westmoreland rain more than any she had yet seen in the
South. Robert accused her of liking it for that reason, but she shook
her head with a sigh, declaring that it was 'nothing without the peaks.'

One afternoon she was shutting the door of the school behind her,
and stepping out on the road skirting the green--the bedabbled wintry
green--when she saw Robert emerging from the Mile End lane. She crossed
over to him, wondering, as she neared him, that he seemed to take no
notice of her. He was striding along, his wideawake over his eyes, and
so absorbed that she had almost touched him before he saw her.

'Darling, is that you? Don't stop me, I am going to take the
pony-carriage in for Meyrick. I have just come back from that accursed
place; three cases of diphtheria in one house, Sharland's wife--and two
others down with fever.'

She made a horrified exclamation.

'It will spread,' he said gloomily, 'I know it will. I never saw the
children look such a ghastly crew before. Well, I must go for Meyrick
and a nurse, and we must isolate and make a