-fares passing overhead.

As he neared the bridge he suddenly caught sight of a figure upon it,
the figure of a man wrapped in a large Inverness cloak, leaning against
the stone parapet. With a start he recognized the Squire.

He went up to him without an instant's slackening of his steady step.
The Squire heard the sound of someone coming, turned, and saw the
Rector.

'I am glad to see you here, Mr. Wendover,' said Robert, stopping and
holding out his hand. 'I meant to have come to talk to you about this
place this morning. I ought to have come before.'

He spoke gently, and quite simply, almost as if they had parted the day
before. The Squire touched his hand for an instant.

'You may not, perhaps, be aware, Mr. Elsmere,' he said, endeavoring to
speak with all his old hauteur, while his heavy lips twitched nervously,
'that, for one reason and another, I knew nothing of the epidemic here
till yesterday, when Meyrick told me.'

'I heard from Mr. Meyrick that it was so. As you are here now, Mr.
Wendover, and I am in no great hurry to get home, may I take you through
and show you the people?'

The Squire at last looked at him straight--at the face worn and pale,
yet still so extraordinarily youthful, in which something of the
solemnity and high emotion of the night seemed to be still lingering.

'Are you just come?' he said abruptly, 'or are you going back?'

'I have been here through the night, sitting up with one of the fever
cases. It's hard work for the nurses and the relations sometimes,
without help.'

The Squire moved on mechanically toward the village, and Robert moved
beside him.

'And Mrs. Elsmere?'

'Mrs. Elsmere was here most of yesterday. She used to stay the night
when the diphtheria was at its worst; but there are only four anxious
cases left, the rest all convalescent.'

The Squire said no more, and they turned into the lane, where the ice
lay thick in the deep ruts, and on either hand curls of smoke rose
into the clear cold sky. The Squire looked about him with eyes which
no detail escaped. Robert, without a word of comment, pointed out this
feature and that, showed where Henslowe had begun repairs, where the
new well was to be, what the water-supply had been till now, drew the
Squire's attention to the roofs, the pigstyes, the drainage, or rather
complete absence of drainage, and all in the dry voice of someone going
through a catalogue. Word had already fled like wildfire through the
ha