Dr. Kennedy had been to Buffalo¹, and taken the smallpox², so his attending physician said, and the news spread rapidly, frightening nervous people as they never were frightened before. Nellie had been home for a week or two, but at the first alarm she fled, rushing headlong through the hall and down the stairs, unmindful of the tremulous voice, which cried imploringly³, "Don't leave me, daughter, to die alone!"

 

Hannah followed next, holding the camphor bottle to her nose, and saying to John when he expostulated with her, "I reckon I's not gwine to spile what little beauty I've got with that fetched complaint."

 

"But, mother," persisted John, "may be it's nothin' but vary-o-lord after all, and that don't mark folks, you know."

 

"You needn't talk to me about your very-o-lord," returned Hannah. "I know it's the very-o-devil himself, and I won't have them pock-ed marks on me for all the niggers in Virginny."

 

"Then go," said John, "hold tight to the camphire, and run for your life, or it may cotch you before you git out of the house."

 

Hannah needed no second bidding to run, and half an hour later she was domesticated⁵ with a colored family who lived not far from the Hill. Thus left to themselves, Louis and John, together with the physician, did what they could for the sick man, who at last proposed sending for Maude, feeling intuitively that she would not desert him as his own child had done. Silent, desolate⁶, and forsaken⁷ the old house looked as Maude approached it, and she involuntarily held her breath as she stepped into the hall, whose close air seemed laden⁸ with infection. She experienced no difficulty in finding the sick-room, where Louis' cry of delight, John's expression of joy, and the sick man's whispered words, "God bless you, Maude," more than recompensed her for the risk she had

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