Over the village rose the low shoulder of a grassy fell, its patches of golden fern glistening under the October sunshine; great sycamores, with their rounded masses of leaf, hung above the dilapidated roofs, as though Nature herself tried to shelter the beings for whom men had no care; the thatched slopes were green with moss and weed; and the blue smoke wreaths that rose from the chimneys, together with the few flowers that gleamed in the gardens, the picturesque irregularity of the houses, and the general setting of wood and distant mountain, made of the poisoned village a “subject,” on which a wandering artist, who had set up his canvas at the corner of the road, was at the moment, indeed, hard at work.  There might be death in those houses; but out of the beauty which sunshine strikes from ruin, a man, honestly in search of a few pounds, was making what he could.

To Faversham’s overstrung mind the whole scene was as the blood-stained palace of the Atreidae to the agonized vision of Cassandra.  He saw it steeped in death—­death upon death—­and dreaded of what new “murder” he might hear as soon as he approached the houses.  For what was it but murder?  His conscience, arguing with itself, did not dispute the word.  Had Melrose, out of his immense income, spent a couple of thousand pounds on the village at any time during the preceding years, a score of deaths would have been saved, and the physical degeneracy of a whole population would have been prevented.

* * * * *

Heavens! that light figure in Dobbs’s garden, talking with the old shepherd—­his heart leapt and then sickened.  It was Lydia.

A poignant fear stirred in him.  He gave his horse a touch of the whip, and was at her side.

“Miss Penfold!—­you oughtn’t to be here!  For heaven’s sake go home!”

Lydia, who in the absorption of her talk with the shepherd had not heard his approach, turned with a start.  Her face was one of passionate grief—­there were tears on her cheek.

“Oh, Mr. Faversham—­”

“The child?” he asked, as he dismounted.

“She died—­last night.”

“Aye, an’ there’s another doon—­t’ li’le boy—­t’ three-year-old,” said old Dobbs sharply, straightening himself on his stick, at sight of the agent.

“The nurses are here?” said Faversham after a pause.

“Aye,” said the shepherd, turning toward his cottage, “but they can do nowt.  The childer are marked for deein afore they’re sick.”  And he walked away, his inner mind shaken with a passion that forbade him to stay and talk with Melrose’s agent.

Two or three labourers who were lounging in front of their houses came slowly toward the agent.  It was evident that there was unemployment as well as disease in the village, and that the neighbouring farms, where there were young children, were cutting themselves off, as much as they could, from the Mainstairs infection, by dismissing the Mainstairs men.