ts will have their reward
hereafter."

"Most comforting!" murmured Schmidt. "But what a satisfaction to be sure
you are right!"

"Yes, to know, sir, that I am right and these my enemies wrong, does
console me; and, too, to feel that I am humbly following in the
footsteps of my Master. But I must go. The chocolate is good. My thanks.
If you relapse, let me know, and the lancet will save you. Good-by."

When Rene returned, having attended the doctor to the door, Schmidt was
smiling.

"Ah, my son," he said, "only in the Old Testament will you find a man
like that--malice and piety, with a belief in himself no man, no reason,
can disturb."

"Yes, I heard him with wonder."

"He has done me good, but now I am tired. He has gone--he said so--to
visit Miss Gainor, at the Hill. I should like to hear her talk to him."

An attack of gout had not improved that lady's temper, and she cruelly
mocked at the great doctor's complaints of his colleagues. When she
heard of De Courval, and how at last he would not agree to have Schmidt
held for the doctor to bleed him she said he was a fine fellow; and to
the doctor's statement that he was a fool, she retorted: "You have
changed your religion twice, I do hear. When you are born again, try to
be born a fool."

The doctor, enraged, would have gone at once, but the gout was in solid
possession, and the threat to send for Dr. Chovet held him. He laughed,
outwardly at least, and did not go. The next day he, too, was in the
grip of the fever, and was bled to his satisfaction, recovering later to
resume his gallant work.

And now that, after another week, Schmidt, a ghastly frame of a man,
began to eat, but still would not talk, De Courval, who had never left
him except for his swim or to walk in the garden, leaving Cicero in
charge, went out into the streets to find a shop and that rare article,
tobacco.

It was now well on into this fatal September. The deaths were three
hundred a week. The sick no man counted, but probably half of those
attacked died. At night in his vigils, De Courval heard negroes, with
push-carts or dragging chaises, cry: "Bring out your dead! Bring out
your dead!" The bodies were let down from upper windows by ropes or left
outside of the doorways until the death-cart came and took them away.

It was about noon when Rene left the house. As he neared the center of
the city, there were more people in the streets than he expected to see;
but all wore a look of