He stared at us, clicking his teeth and frowning. Then he said, curtly, "Wal, I'll take the dime, Sissy--I kin make a dime go farther than a dollar, can't I, boys?" "You bet," said Ajax. "And now, Sissy, you run along home," said Pap. "We'll take her," I said, for Sissy was a sworn friend of ours. At once she put her left hand into mine. We bade the old man good-night, and took leave of him. On the threshold Ajax turned and asked a question---- "Won't you reconsider your decision, Mr. Spooner?" "No," he snapped, "I won't. I dunno as all this ain't a reg'lar plant. Looks like it. And, as I say, the scallywags in these yere foothills need thinnin'--they need thinnin'." Ajax said something in a low voice which Sissy and I could not hear. Later I asked him what it was, because Pap had clicked his teeth. "I told him," said my brother, "that he needn't think his call was coming, because I was quite certain that they did not want him either in Heaven--or in the other place." "Oh," said I, "I thought that you were going to use a little tact with Pap Spooner." * * * * * Next morning, early, we had a meeting in the store. A young doctor, a capital fellow, had come out from San Lorenzo with the intention of camping with us till the disease was wiped out; but he shook his head very solemnly when someone suggested that the first case, carefully isolated, might prove the last. There were two fresh cases that night! I shall not attempt to describe the horrors that filled the next three weeks. But, not for the first time, I was struck by the heroism and self-sacrifice of these rude foothill folk, whose great qualities shine brightest in the dark hours of adversity. My brother and I had passed through the big boom, when our part of California had become of a sudden a Tom Tiddler's ground, where the youngest and simplest could pick up gold and silver. We had seen our county drunk with prosperity --drunk and disorderly. And we had seen also these same revellers chastened by low prices, dry seasons, and commercial stagnation. But we had yet to witness the crowning sobering effect of a raging pestilence. The little schoolmarm, Alethea-Belle Buchanan, organised the women into a staff of nurses. Mrs. Dumble enrolled herself amongst the band. Did she take comfort in the thought that she was wiping out John Jacob Dumble's innumerable rogueries? Let us hope so. Within a week yellow bunting waved from half a score of cottages in and about Paradise. And then, one heavenly morning, as we were riding into the village, we saw the hideous warning fluttering outside George Leadham's door. Sissy was down with it! Poor George, his brown, weather-beaten face seamed with misery, met us at the garden gate. "She's awful bad," he muttered, "an' the doc. says she'll be worse afore she's better." Next door a man was digging two graves in his garden.