“Fever epidemic in Blankshire. Medical help urgently required. The villages specially affected by the fever, are Loam, Hurstleigh, Marston, Styles, and Lislehurst—all on the estate of the Marquess of St. Quentin.
“The epidemic is of a very serious nature. The Chief Sanitary Inspector of Donisbro’ visited the affected villages upon the outbreak of the illness, and declares the cottages to be in a greatly neglected condition.
“The local physician has applied for help to the staff of the London Hospitals.”

Hugh Chichester read these words in the hall of the Blue-friars Hospital, as he and another young doctor waited for a “case,” which was being brought in from the street.
“Estate of the Marquess of St. Quentin,”
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 his companion commented. “Isn’t that the chap who had that frightful motor-smash three months ago? Why, hullo! Chichester, old man! Are you off your head?”
For Hugh had flung himself into the lift without a word, and was swooping upward to the first floor, where he knew that he would find his father.
The doctor was free for the moment, but Hugh knew that he himself was not. He only paused to thrust the paper in his father’s hand, with a hoarse “Read that,” and was down the staircase and in the hall again, before the “case,” upon its stretcher, had crossed the wide open paved courtyard of the Blue-friars Hospital.
Dr. Chichester was quick of understanding, as doctors generally are.
“You want to go to Blankshire, my boy?” he said, when he and his son met for their hastily-snatched luncheon.
“Yes, father.”
“I think it may be possible,” the doctor said. “Help is certainly needed, to judge from the papers, and I would not hold you back. But, my boy, you must remember it may mean the loss of your post here, unless the Hospital elects to send you to Blankshire.”
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Hugh nodded.
“And, Hugh,” his father went on, “you must give me your word that you keep away from Sydney. It won’t be easy, but I know that I can trust you to think of her and not yourself. You want to spare her from suffering what you suffer. You will prove yourself her true ‘servant’ in this, as ‘Dorothy Osborne’ would say to us. If you can trust yourself to keep clear of intercourse with her, I think that you are right to volunteer your services. I should have done so myself years ago.”
“Yes, I’ll keep away from her,” Hugh muttered, and the doctor said, “All right, my boy, I trust you. We will see what your mother says to sending you to Blankshire.”
And Mrs. Chichester said “Yes.” Perhaps those little snatches of fireside talk, for which big bearded sons on the other side of the world grow homesick, had made her understand her boy with that absolute understanding sympathy which only mothers have the power to give.
“Yes, you must go, my Hugh,” she said, “for you will be able to help those poor people, and I know that you will be my unselfish son, as you have always been, and make it easy for Sydney.”
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“I will, mother,” Hugh said, and so packed his things and offered his services to Dr. Lorry.
The old doctor met him at Dacreshaw Station; he was looking older and his cheery utterances came out with an effort.
“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Chichester, extremely glad; for I can’t deny that this fever is a very serious one, and the condition of the cottages is so much against the poor people’s chances of recovery. Still, I have no doubt, no, none at all, that, with your able assistance, we shall soon see a marked improvement.”
“They haven’t got it at the Castle, have they?” Hugh asked anxiously as he climbed up into the high dog-cart by the old doctor’s side, and was driven rapidly along the muddy country roads towards Lislehurst.
“No! no!” Dr. Lorry said, “and I see no real reason why they should. Lady Frederica is extremely anxious to carry off Miss Lisle to town, but I have endeavoured to dissuade her. Miss Lisle has been so much about among the cottages of late, that I am anxious—not about her, oh dear no! but anxious, I repeat, to have her under my own eye for a day or two longer. And it is not as though she ran any risk in remaining,
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 as I have assured Lord St. Quentin. These low fevers cannot well be called infectious.” He relapsed into silence,—an unusual state with him—which lasted till they reached Lislehurst, and his own gate. They got down and a man took the cob’s head. “Now we are at my house, my dear—er, Chichester,” he said, rousing himself, “and perhaps, when you have lunched, you would not mind coming round with me to see the little boy at the Vicarage, who is, I fear, in a rather critical condition.” Hugh started. “Little Paul ill! I will come at once, if you don’t mind, sir.”
“You will come at once? Well, if you are not fatigued, I own it would be a relief. His condition is decidedly critical, and your science is a good deal fresher than mine. Not that I take at all a hopeless view of his case, far from it!” the old doctor said, blowing his nose rather fiercely; “but he’s his father’s only child, sir, and—motherless.”
Hugh was already hurrying out into the village by the old doctor’s side. “Little Pauly ill!—that jolly little chap!” he kept on saying, and he walked so fast that the old man could hardly keep pace with him.
There was a strange silence in the village. Hardly any children were playing in the
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 road. “We had to shut the schools,” said Dr. Lorry.
The village seemed almost as though it held its breath and waited for some stroke to fall.
Hugh looked up at the tall, grey tower of Lislehurst Church as they passed beneath it, and thought of little P............