'No matter for that, to Mr. Henry I'm an old fogie, and depend upon
it, if it were only the giving a dose of salts, he would like to have
the case to himself. These poor creatures were parish patients, and
I don't mean that his treatment was amiss. Spencer is right, it was
an atmosphere where there was no saving anyone, but if he had not
been so delighted with his own way, and I had known what was going
on, I'd have got the Guardians and the Town Council and routed out
the place. Seventeen cases, and most of them the worst form!'

'But what was Mr. Ward about?

'"Says I to myself, here's a lesson for me;
This man's but a picture of what I shall be,"

'when Master Tom gets the upper hand of me,' returned Dr. May. 'Poor
Ward, who has run to me in all his difficulties these thirty years,
didn't like it at all; but Mr. Henry was so confident with his simple
epidemic, and had got him in such order, that he durst not speak.'

'And what brought it to light at last?'

'Everything at once. First the clerics go to see about the family
where the infant died, and report to Spencer; he comes after me, and
we start to reconnoitre. Then I am called in to see Shearman's
daughter--a very ugly case that--and coming out I meet poor Ward
himself, wanting me to see Henry, and there's the other boy sickening
too. Then I went down and saw all those cases in the Lower Ponds,
and have been running about the town ever since to try what can be
done, hunting up nurses, whom I can't get, stirring dishes of skim