“I told Curtis you weren’t to go near Beelzebub.”

“I know,” she answered.  “Mr. Curtis told me.”

He cracked his whip savagely.

“Where is Curtis?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.  “But, Brett, if you are angry because I went you must deal with me, not with Mr. Curtis.  He had nothing whatever to do with it.”

Mercer was silent, and she divined with no sense of elation that he would not turn his anger against her.

They entered the house together, and he strode through the passage, calling for Curtis.  But when the latter appeared in answer to the summons, to her surprise Mercer began to speak upon a totally different subject.

“I have just seen Stevens from Wallarroo.  They are all in a mortal funk there.  He was on his way over here to ask you to go and look at a man who is very bad with something that looks like smallpox.  You can please yourself about going; though, if you take my advice, you’ll stay away.”

Curtis did not at once reply.  He gravely took the empty bowl from Sybil’s hand, and it was upon her that his eyes rested as he finally said, “Do you think you could manage without me?”

She looked up with perfect steadiness.

“Certainly I could.  Please do as you think right!”

“What about Beelzebub?” he said.

Mercer made a restless movement.

“He will be on his legs again in a day or two.  One of the men must look after him.”

“I shall look after him,” Sybil said, with a calmness of resolution that astounded both her hearers.

Mercer put his hand on her shoulder, but said nothing.  It was Curtis who spoke with the voice of authority.

“You will have to take care of her,” he said bluntly.  “Bear in mind what I said to you last night!  I will show you how to treat the arm.  And then I think I had better go.  It may prevent an epidemic.”

Thereafter he assumed so businesslike an air that he seemed to Sybil to be completely transformed.  There never had been much deference in his attitude towards Mercer, but he treated him now without the smallest ceremony.  He was as a man suddenly awakened from a long lethargy.  From that moment to the moment of his departure his activity was unceasing.

Sybil and Mercer watched him finally ride away, and it was not till he was actually gone that the fact that she was left absolutely alone with her husband came home to her.

With a sense of shock she realized it, and those words of Beelzebub’s—­the words that she had been so resolutely forcing into the back of her mind—­came crowding back upon her with a vividness and persistence that were wholly beyond her control.

What was she going to do, she wondered?  What could she do with this awful, this unspeakable doubt pressing ever upon her?  It might all be a mistake, a hideous mistake on Beelzebub’s part.  She had no great faith in his intelligence.  It might be that by some evil chance his muddled brain had registered the name of Bowker Creek in connection with the fight which she did not for a moment doubt had at some time taken place.  Beelzebub was never reliable in the matter of details, and he had not been able to answer her question regarding the place.