“You’m making fun at us,” said old Beer dubiously.

“Well, Mr. Beer, and isn’t that better than quarrelling with you?  Come along, we’ll all go home and forget it, like good Christians.  Perhaps the cholera won’t come; and if it does, what’s the odds so long as you’re happy, eh?”

And to the intense astonishment both of the Lieutenant and Frank, Tom walked home with the malcontents, making himself so agreeable, that he was forgiven freely on the spot.

“What does the fellow mean?  He’s deserted us, sir, after bringing us here to make fools of us!”

Frank could give no answer; but Thurnall gave one himself that evening, both to Frank and the Lieutenant.

“The cholera will come; and these fellows are just mad; but I mustn’t quarrel with them, mad or not.”

“Why, then?”

“For the same reason that you must not.  If we keep our influence, we may be able to do some good at the last, which means, in plain English, saving a few human lives.  As for you Lieutenant, you have behaved like a hero, and have been served as heroes generally are.  What you must do is this.  On the first hint of disease, pack up your traps and your good lady, and go and live in the watch-house across the river.  As for the men’s houses, I’ll set them to rights in a day, if you’ll get the commander of the district to allow you a little chloride of lime and whitewash.”

And so the matter ended.

“You are a greater puzzle than ever to me, Thurnall,” said Frank.  “You are always pretending to care for nothing but your own interest, and yet here you have gone out of your way to incur odium, knowing, you say, that your cause was all but hopeless.”

“Well, I do it because I like it.  It’s a sort of sporting with your true doctor.  He blazes away at a disease where he sees one, as he would at a bear or a lion; the very sight of it excites his organ of destructiveness.  Don’t you understand me?  You hate sin, you know.  Well, I hate disease.  Moral evil is your devil, and physical evil is mine.  I hate it, little or big; I hate to see a fellow sick; I hate to see a child rickety and pale; I hate to see a speck of dirt in the street; I hate to see a woman’s gown torn; I hate to see her stockings down at heel; I hate to see anything wasted, anything awry, anything going wrong; I hate to see water-power wasted, manure wasted, land wasted, muscle wasted, pluck wasted, brains wasted; I hate neglect, incapacity, idleness, ignorance, and all the disease and misery which spring out of that.  There’s my devil; and I can’t help it for the life of me, going right at his throat, wheresoever I meet him!”

Lastly, rather to clear his reputation than in the hope of doing good, Tom wrote up to London, and detailed the case to that much-calummated body, the General Board of Health, informing them civilly, that the Nuisances Removal Act was simply waste paper; that he could not get it to bear at all on Aberalva; and that if he had done so, it would have been equally useless, for the simple reason that it constituted the offenders themselves judge and jury in their own case.