Now the Rector was an old man.  Most of the parish officers were aged, and patriarchs in white smock frocks were as plentiful as creepers at the cottage doors.  The healthy breezes and the dull pace at which life passed in the district seemed to make men slow to wear out.  If the Rector had profited by these features of the parish in health, it must be confessed that they had also had their influence on his career.  He was a good man, and a learned one.  He stuck close to his living, and he was benevolent.  But he was not of those heroic natures who can resist the influence of the mental atmosphere around them; and in a dull parish, in a sleepy age, he had not been an active parson.  Some men, however, who cannot make opportunities for themselves, can do nobly enough if the chance comes to them; and this chance came to the Rector in his sixty-ninth year, on the wings of the black fever.  To quicken spiritual life in the soul of a Master Salter he had not the courage even to attempt; but a panic of physical cowardice had not a temptation for him.  And so it came about that of four men who stayed the panic, by the example of their own courage, who went from house to house, and from sick-bed to sick-bed—­who drew a cordon round the parish, and established kitchens and a temporary hospital, and nursed the sick, and encouraged the living, and buried the dead,—­the most active was the old Rector.

The other three were the parish doctor, Squire Ammaby, and the schoolmaster.

On the very first rumor of the epidemic, Lady Louisa had carried off Amabel, and had gone with Lady Craikshaw to Brighton.  Both the ladies were indignant with the Squire’s obstinate resolve to remain amongst his tenants.  In her alarm, Lady Louisa implored him to sell the property and buy one in Ireland, which was Lady Craikshaw’s native country; and the list she contrived to run up of the drawbacks to the Ammaby estate would have driven a temper less stolid than her husband’s to distraction.

When the fever broke out among the children, the schools were closed, and Master Swift devoted his whole time to laboring with the parson, the doctor, and the Squire.

No part of the Rector’s devotion won more affectionate gratitude from his people than a single act of thoughtfulness, by which he preserved a record of the graves of their dead.  He had held firmly on to a decent and reverent burial, and, foreseeing that the poor survivors would be quite unable to afford gravestones, he kept a strict list of the dead, and where they were buried, which was afterwards transferred to one large monument, which was bought by subscription.  He cut the village off from all communication with the outer world, to prevent a spread of the disease; but he sent accounts of the calamity to the public papers, which brought abundant help in money for the needs of the parish.  And in these matters the schoolmaster was his right-hand man.

The disease was most eccentric in its path.  Having scourged one side only of the main street, it burst out with virulence in detached houses at a distance.  Then it returned to the village, and after lulls and outbreaks it ceased as suddenly as it began.