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frightened him, though of Mr. Thistlethwaite (by far the most terrifying denizen of the Cooper’s Arms) he was not in the least afraid no matter how loudly he roared. His character inclined to thoughtful silences; though he would smile readily, he would not laugh, and never looked either sad or ill-tempered.
    “I declare that he has the temperament of a monastery friar,” said Mr. Thistlethwaite. “Ye may have bred up a Carthlick yet.”

    Five days ago a whisper had surfaced at the Cooper’s Arms: a few cases of the smallpox had appeared, but too widely dispersed to think of containment by quarantine, every city’s first—and last—desperate hope.
    Peg’s eyes started from her head. “Oh, Richard, not again!”
    “We will have William Henry inoculated” was Richard’s answer. After which he sent a message to Cousin James-the-druggist.
    Who looked aghast when told what was required of him. “Jesus, Richard, no! Inoculation is for older folk! I have never heard of it for a babe barely out of his clouts! It would kill him! Far better to do one of two things—send him away to the farm, or keep him here in as much isolation as ye can. And pray, whichever course ye choose.”
    “Inoculation, Cousin James. It must be inoculation.”
    “Richard, I will not do it!” Cousin James-the-druggist turned to Dick, listening grimly. “Dick, say something! Do something! I
beseech
you!”
    For once Richard’s father stood by him. “Jim, neither course would work. To get William Henry out of Bristol—no, hear me out!—to get William Henry out of Bristol would mean hiring a hackney, and who can tell what manner of person last sat in it? Or who might be on the ferry at Rownham Meads? And how can we isolate anybody in a tavern? This ain’t St. James’s on a Sunday, lively though that can be. All manner of folk come through my door. No, Jim, it must be inoculation.”
    “Be it on your own heads, then!” cried Cousin James-the-druggist as he stumbled off, wringing his hands, to enquire of a doctor friend whereabouts he might find a victim of the smallpox who had reached rupture-of-the-pustules stage. Not so difficult a task; people were coming down with the disease everywhere. Mostly under the age of fifteen.
    “Pray for me,” Cousin James-the-druggist said to his doctor friend as he laid his ordinary darning needle down across a running sore on the twelve-year-old girl’s face and turned it over and over to coat it with pus. Oh, poor soul! It had been such a pretty face, but it never would be again. “Pray for me,” he said as he rose to his feet and put the sopping needle on a bed of lint in a small tin case. “Pray that I am not about to do murder.”
    He hastened immediately to the Cooper’s Arms, not a very long walk. And there, the partly naked William Henry on his knee, he took the darning needle from its case, placed its point against—against—oh, where ought he to do this murder? And such a
public
one, between the regulars sitting in their usual places, Mr. Thistlethwaite making a show of casually sucking his teeth, and the Morgans looming in a ring around him as if to prevent his fleeing should he take a notion to do so. Suddenly it was done; he pinched the flesh of William Henry’s arm just below the left shoulder, pushed the big needle in, then drew it out an inch away by its point.
    William Henry did not flinch, did not cry. He turned his large and extraordinary eyes upon Cousin James’s sweating face and looked a question—why did you do that to me? It hurt!
    Oh why, why did I? I have never seen such eyes in a head! Not animal’s eyes, but not human either. This is a strange child.
    So he kissed William Henry all over his face, wiped away his own tears, put the needle back in its tin to burn the whole thing later in his hottest furnace, and handed William Henry to Richard.
    “There, it is done. Now I am going to pray. Not for William Henry’s soul—what babe needs fear for stains on that? To