That court belonged to Treluddra, the old fish-jowder.  He must do something.  Thurnall attacks him; Major Campbell, Headley; the neighbours join in the cry; for there is no mistaking cause and effect there, and no one bears a great love to him; besides, terrified and conscience-stricken men are glad of a scapegoat; and some of those who were his stoutest backers in the vestry are now, in their terror, the loudest against him, ready to impute the whole cholera to him.  Indeed, old Beer is ready to declare that it was Treluddra’s fish-heaps which poisoned him and his:  so, all but mobbed, the old sinner goes up—­to set the houses to rights?  No; to curse the whole lot for a set of pigs, and order them to clean the place out themselves, or he will turn them into the street.  He is one of those base natures, whom fact only lashes into greater fury,—­a Pharaoh whose heart the Lord himself can only harden; such men there are, and women, too, grown grey in lies, to reap at last the fruit of lies.  But he carries back with him to his fish-heaps a little invisible somewhat which he did not bring; and ere nightfall he is dead hideously; he, his wife, his son:—­and now the Beers are down again, and the whole neighbourhood of Treluddra’s house is wild with disgusting agony.

Now the fiend is hovering round the fish-curing houses:  but turns back, disgusted with the pure scent of the tan-yard, where not hides, but nets are barked; skips on board of a brig in the quay-pool; and a poor collier’s ’prentice dies, and goes to his own place.  What harm has he done?  Is it his sin that, ill-fed and well-beaten daily, he has been left to sleep on board, just opposite the sewer’s mouth, in a berth some four feet long by two feet high and broad?

Or is it that poor girl’s sin who was just now in Heale’s shop, talking to Miss Heale safe and sound, that she is carried back into it, in half-an-hour’s time, fainting, shrieking?  One must draw a veil over the too hideous details.

No, not her fault:  but there, at least, the curse has not come without a cause.  For she is Tardrew’s daughter.

But whither have we got?  How long has the cholera been in Aberalva?  Five days, five minutes, or five years?  How many suns have risen and set since Frank Headley put into his bosom Valencia’s pledge!

It would be hard for him to tell; and hard for many more:  for all the days have passed as in a fever dream.  To cowards the time has seemed endless; and every moment, ere their term shall come, an age of terror, of self-reproach, of superstitious prayers, and cries, which are not repentance.  And to some cowards, too, the days have seemed but as a moment; for they have been drunk day and night.

Strange and hideous, yet true.