The doctor looked grave.

“I don’t like it,” he said, “but I’m not quite sure yet.  If it is smallpox the eruption will probably by out by morning.  I must admit he has most of the symptoms.  Will you have him taken to the hospital?”

“No,” said Eunice, decisively.  “I’ll nurse him myself.  I’m not afraid and I’m well and strong.”

“Very well.  You’ve been vaccinated lately?”

“Yes.”

“Well, nothing more can be done at present.  You may as well lie down for a while and save your strength.”

But Eunice could not do that.  There was too much to attend to.  She went out to the hall and threw up the window.  Down below, at a safe distance, Charles Holland was waiting.  The cold wind blew up to Eunice the odor of the disinfectants with which he had steeped himself.

“What does the doctor say?” he shouted.

“He thinks it’s the smallpox.  Have you sent word to Victoria?”

“Yes, Jim Blewett drove into town and told her.  She’ll stay with her sister till it is over.  Of course it’s the best thing for her to do.  She’s terribly frightened.”

Eunice’s lip curled contemptuously.  To her, a wife who could desert her husband, no matter what disease he had, was an incomprehensible creature.  But it was better so; she would have Christopher all to herself.

The night was long and wearisome, but the morning came all too soon for the dread certainty it brought.  The doctor pronounced the case smallpox.  Eunice had hoped against hope, but now, knowing the worst, she was very calm and resolute.

By noon the fateful yellow flag was flying over the house, and all arrangements had been made.  Caroline was to do the necessary cooking, and Charles was to bring the food and leave it in the yard.  Old Giles Blewett was to come every day and attend to the stock, as well as help Eunice with the sick man; and the long, hard fight with death began.

It was a hard fight, indeed.  Christopher Holland, in the clutches of the loathsome disease, was an object from which his nearest and dearest might have been pardoned for shrinking.  But Eunice never faltered; she never left her post.  Sometimes she dozed in a chair by the bed, but she never lay down.  Her endurance was something wonderful, her patience and tenderness almost superhuman.  To and fro she went, in noiseless ministry, as the long, dreadful days wore away, with a quiet smile on her lips, and in her dark, sorrowful eyes the rapt look of a pictured saint in some dim cathedral niche.  For her there was no world outside the bare room where lay the repulsive object she loved.

One day the doctor looked very grave.  He had grown well-hardened to pitiful scenes in his life-time; but he shrunk from telling Eunice that her brother could not live.  He had never seen such devotion as hers.  It seemed brutal to tell her that it had been in vain.