you are risking your lives needlessly for me, and if it should come
into the house, and any of you die, I shall charge myself all my life
with having been the cause of your death. I pray you, for my sake as
well as your own, to lose no time in going to the sister Captain Dave
spoke of, down near Gloucester."

"Do not agitate yourself," Mrs. Dowsett said gently, pressing him
quietly back on to the pillows from which he had risen in his
excitement. "We will talk it over, and see what is for the best. It
is but a solitary case yet, and may spread no further. In a few days
we shall see how matters go. Things have not come to a bad pass yet."

Cyril, however, was not to be consoled. Hitherto he had given
comparatively small thought to the Plague, but now that it was in the
City, and he felt that his presence alone prevented the family from
leaving, he worried incessantly over it.

"Your patient is not so well," the doctor said to Mrs. Dowsett, next
morning. "Yesterday he was quite free from fever--his hands were
cool; now they are dry and hard. If this goes on, I fear that we
shall have great trouble."

"He is worrying himself because we do not go out of town. We had,
indeed, made up our minds to do so, but we could not leave him here."

"Your nursing would be valuable certainly, but if he goes on as he is
he will soon be in a high fever; his wounds will grow angry and
fester. While yesterday he seemed in a fair way to recovery, I should
be sorry to give any favourable opinion as to what may happen if this
goes on. Is there no one who could take care of him if you went?"