Nation-wide sped the news, branding Worthington as a pest-ridden city.  Every newspaper in the country had a conspicuous dispatch about it.  The bulletin of the United States Public Health Service, as in duty bound, gave official and statistical currency to the town’s misfortune.  Other cities in the State threatened a quarantine against Worthington.  Commercial travelers and buyers postponed their local visits.  The hotel registers thinned out notably.  Business drooped.  For all of which the “Clarion” was vehemently blamed by those most concerned.

Conversely, the paper should have received part credit for the extremely vigorous campaign which the health authorities, under Dr. Merritt, set on foot at once.  Using the “Clarion” exposure as a lever, the health officer pried open the Council-guarded city tills for an initial appropriation of ten thousand dollars, got a hasty ordinance passed penalizing, not the diagnosing of typhus, but failure to diagnose and report it,—­not a man from the Surtaine army of suppression had the temerity to oppose the measure,—­organized a medical inspection and detection corps, threw a contagion-proof quarantine about every infected building, hunted down and isolated the fugitives from the danger-points who had scattered at the first alarm, inspired the county medical society to an enthusiastic support, bullied the police into a state of reasonable efficiency, and with a combined volunteer and regular force faced the epidemic in military form.  Not least conspicuous among the volunteers were Miss Esme Elliot and Miss Kathleen Pierce, who had been released from quarantine quite as early as the law allowed, because of the need for them at the front.

“We could never have done our job without you,” said Dr. Merritt to Hal, meeting him by chance one morning ten days after the publication of the “spread.”  “If the city is saved from a regular pestilence, it’ll be the Clarion’s’ doing.”

“That doesn’t seem to be the opinion of the business men of the place,” said Hal, with a rather dreary smile.  He had just been going over with the lugubrious Shearson a batch of advertising cancellations.

“Oh, don’t look for any credit from this town,” retorted the health officer.  “I’m practically ostracized, already, for my share in it.”

“But are you beating it out?”

“God knows,” answered the other.  “I thought we’d traced all the foci of infection.  But two new localities broke out to-day.  That’s the way an epidemic goes.”

And that is the way the Worthington typhus went for more than a month.  Throughout that month the “Clarion” was carrying on an anti-epidemic campaign of its own, with the slogan “Don’t Give up Old Home Week.”  Wise strategy this, in a double sense.  It rallied public effort for victory by a definite date, for the Committee on Arrangements, despite the arguments of the weak-kneed among its number, and largely by virtue of the militant optimism of its chairman, had decided to go on with the centennial celebration if the city could show a clean bill of health by August 30, thus giving six weeks’ leeway.