Wroxton had hitherto suffered less than other towns, but by the beginning of October the supply began to cause uneasiness. But the water-company had another spring up its sleeve, and, to quiet complaints, about the second week in the month it was drawn upon, and the intelligent public was deprived of its right to grumble. The weather was hot and unseasonable, with the heat not of an invigorating sun, but of the closed and vitiated atmosphere of a packed room. Day after day a blanket of gray cloud covered the earth as with a lid, yet the rain came not. A windless, suffocating calm environed the earth; it was rank weather for man and beast. The perennial green of the great downs faded to an unwholesome yellow, like a carpet that is losing its colour from the sun, and the nights were dewless. The heavenly forces that temper the frosts of winter with a benigant sun and the heats of summer with the cool dews of night seemed to have been struck dead. Clouds overset the earth, but neither dispersed nor discharged. It was as if the vitality of the seasons had failed, as if the earth was abandoned to decay. Jeannie was immune from the assaults of climate, and Miss Fortescue went out so seldom that she found no great disagreeableness in the stagnation of the air. But Colonel Raymond felt it acutely, and said it was like waiting for the rains in India. Miss Clara Clifford could no more write poetry than she could play the mandolin, and Miss Phœbe would have as soon thought of playing the mandolin as of embarking on an epic. But the Colonel gave up the brisk walks while such dispiriting weather lasted, and though Mrs. Raymond dwindled and paled, she found her consolation in seeing the children play hide-and-seek among the gooseberry bushes. Ten days after the new spring had been drawn upon certain ill-defined cases of illness began to appear in the town. For the most part they were among children, and the doctors for a day or two considered them as only a natural outcome of this long-continued sultriness and inclement air. But they were not wholly at their ease about it, and as the cases increased day by day it was no longer possible to exclude the idea that this was an epidemic. By this time some of the first cases, which were now five or six days old, began to look grave, and before the week was out it was generally known that typhoid had appeared in many houses. Several of Jeannie’s various classes were ill with the hitherto unspecified fever, and she had been visiting them daily at their homes. She was up in the nursery making herself agreeable to the baby one morning when Miss Fortescue came in, looking grave. “Jeannie, some of your girls have been ill, have they not?” she asked. “Yes, four or five of them and several of the boys. I am just going out to see them.” “Leave the child,” said Miss Fortescue, “and come.” Jeannie followed her, and a howl followed Jeannie. “What is it, Aunt Em?” she asked, when they were outside.