misfortune. Other
cities in the State threatened a quarantine against Worthington.
Commercial travelers and buyers postponed their local visits. The hotel
registers thinned out notably. Business drooped. For all of which the
"Clarion" was vehemently blamed by those most concerned.

Conversely, the paper should have received part credit for the extremely
vigorous campaign which the health authorities, under Dr. Merritt, set
on foot at once. Using the "Clarion" exposure as a lever, the health
officer pried open the Council-guarded city tills for an initial
appropriation of ten thousand dollars, got a hasty ordinance passed
penalizing, not the diagnosing of typhus, but failure to diagnose and
report it,--not a man from the Surtaine army of suppression had the
temerity to oppose the measure,--organized a medical inspection and
detection corps, threw a contagion-proof quarantine about every infected
building, hunted down and isolated the fugitives from the danger-points
who had scattered at the first alarm, inspired the county medical
society to an enthusiastic support, bullied the police into a state of
reasonable efficiency, and with a combined volunteer and regular force
faced the epidemic in military form. Not least conspicuous among the
volunteers were Miss Esme Elliot and Miss Kathleen Pierce, who had been
released from quarantine quite as early as the law allowed, because of
the need for them at the front.

"We could never have done our job without you," said Dr. Merritt to Hal,
meeting him by chance one morning ten days after the publication of the
"spread." "If the city is saved from a regular pestilence, it'll be the
Clarion's' doing."

"That doesn't seem to be the opinion of the business men of the place,"
said Hal, with a rather dreary smile. He had just been going over with
the lugubrious Shearson a batch of advertising cancellations.

"Oh, don't look for any credit from this town," retorted the health
officer. "I'm practically ostracized, already, for my share in it."

"But are you beating it out?"

"God knows," answered the other. "I thought we'd traced all the foci of
infection. But two new localities broke out to-day. That's the way an
epidemic goes."

And that is the way the Worthington typhus went for more than a month.
Throughout that month the "Clarion" was carrying on an anti-epidemic
campaign of its own, with the slogan "Don't Give up Old Home Week." Wise
strategy this, in a double sense. It r