What had that to do with cholera?  And more than one gave him to understand that he must be either a very silly or a very impertinent person, to go poking into how many houses there were in the town, and how many people lived in each.  Tardrew, the steward, indeed, said openly, that Mr. Thurnall was making disturbance enough in people’s property up at Pentremochyn, without bothering himself with Aberalva too.  He had no opinion of people who had a finger in everybody’s pie.  Whom Tom tried to soothe with honeyed words, knowing him to be of the original British bulldog breed, which, once stroked against the hair, shows his teeth at you for ever afterwards.

But staunch was Tardrew, unfortunately on the wrong side; and backed by the collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of Aberalva, showed to his new assailant that terrible front of stupidity, against which, says Schiller, “the gods themselves fight in vain.”

“Does he think we was all fools afore he came here?”

That was the rallying cry of the Conservative party, worshippers of Baalzebub, god of flies, and of that (so say Syrian scholars) from which flies are bred.  And, indeed, there were excuses for them, on the Yankee ground, that “there’s a deal of human natur’ in man.”  It is hard to human nature to make all the humiliating confessions which must precede sanitary repentance; to say, “I have been a very nasty, dirty fellow.  I have lived contented in evil smells, till I care for them no more than my pig does.  I have refused to understand Nature’s broadest hints, that anything which is so disagreeable is not meant to be left about.  I have probably been more or less the cause of half my own illnesses, and of three-fourths of the illness of my children; for aught I know, it is very much my fault that my own baby has died of scarlatina, and two or three of my tenants of typhus.  No, hang it! that’s too much to make any man confess to!  I’ll prove my innocence by not reforming!” So sanitary reform is thrust out of sight, simply because its necessity is too humiliating to the pride of all, too frightful to the consciences of many.

Tom went to Trebooze.

“Mr. Trebooze, you are a man of position in the county, and own some houses in Aberalva.  Don’t you think you could use your influence in this matter?”

“Own some houses?  Yes,”—­and Mr. Trebooze consigned the said cottages to a variety of unmentionable places; “cost me more in rates than they bring in in rent, even if I get the rent paid.  I should like to get a six-pounder, and blow the whole lot into the sea.  Cholera coming, eh?  D’ye think it will he there before Michaelmas?”

“I do.”

“Pity I can’t clear ’em out before Michaelmas.  Else I’d have ejected the lot, and pulled the houses down.”

“I think something should be done meanwhile, though, towards cleansing them.”