“Ye died with the people then,” she said, pausing with her hand on the door-handle.  “But sure, why would there be the fever?  Isn’t there as fine a crop as ever was seen of potatoes?  And Master Richard wouldn’t let you put a hair of your head in danger.  I’m not sayin’ there’s anything in the sickness.  It’s a sick time o’ year.  But if there was anything you should keep away, Miss Bawn.  There’s lots to do it without you.  You’re not looking too well now.  Master Richard should be uneasy for you.”

I spoke to my godmother about Nora later in the day, keeping back her secret, but only telling her that there were reasons which made her feel she must go.  She knew the girl, was interested in her, and as it happened, one of her many friends had written to her that she wanted a young maid to be with two little girls.  The situation was in England.  Perhaps Nora would be satisfied if the Irish Sea lay between her and Richard Dawson.

I was returning home in the afternoon of the next day.  My lover was restive over the loss of so much of my society.  But the morning was bright and cheerful, and I thought I would walk over to Araglin and lay the matter before Nora.

It was a most delightful autumn day.  There had been a hoar-frost in the night and the dead leaves and twigs had a tracery of silver and crackled under one’s foot as one walked.  It was a day for exhilaration if one were happy, and, despite the load of care which hung heavy upon me, I found myself walking less languidly than I had done of late.  The boughs were now all bare; and where one had only seen leaves one saw a network of trees and branches against a blue sky, and beyond the trees the Purple Hill, which is hidden from one on our tree-hung road so long as the trees are in leaf.  The little robins sang cheerfully in many trees, and the air was so still that a beech-nut falling from the tree made quite a great noise.

As I came down the hilly road to where the village smoked in its hollow, I had an idea that a stillness lay upon it like the blue mists of autumn that were over all the countryside.  Araglin is usually the noisiest of villages—­cocks crowing, hens cackling, dogs barking, children shouting at their play.  But this morning it was silent.

Nora’s uncle’s house lay almost outside the village, quite at its beginning.  I thought I should find her there alone, but, as it happened, when I was close to it, she came out carrying a pail, evidently on her way to fetch water from a stream which flowed by the roadside and here and there widened into a little well.

She was close to me before she saw me.  When she did at last catch sight of me I was amazed at the swift change in the expression of her face.  It had been moody enough when I had had time to observe it in repose.  Now something of fear, of horror, leaped into it.

“Go back at once, Miss Bawn, for God’s sake!” she cried.  “Go back, and don’t be coming near me.  There’s small-pox in the village and I’ve been in and out with them.  Half the village is sickening for it; the doctor’s distracted.  He’s sent word up to Dublin to send nurses and doctors.  Thank God, I was able to turn you back.  Go home, Miss Bawn, and come here no more.”