“We can’t throttle it,” he said to Dicky Donovan. “They don’t give us the ghost of a chance. To-day I found a dead-un hid in an oven under a heap of flour to be used for to-morrow’s baking; I found another doubled up in a cupboard, and another under a pile of dourha which will be ground into flour.” “With twenty ghaffirs I beat five cane and dourha fields this morning,” said Dicky. “Found three cases. They’d been taken out of the village during the night.” “Bad ones?” “So so. They’ll be worse before they’re better. That was my morning’s flutter. This afternoon I found the huts these gentlemen call their homes. I knocked holes in the roofs per usual, burnt everything that wasn’t wood, let in the light o’ heaven, and splashed about limewash and perchloride. That’s my day’s tot-up. Any particular trouble?” he added, eyeing Fielding closely. Fielding fretfully jerked his foot on the floor, and lighted his pipe, the first that day. “Heaps. I’ve put the barber in prison, and given the sarraf twenty lashes for certifying that the death of the son of the Mamour was el aadah--the ordinary. It was one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen. He fell ill at ten and was dead at two, the permis d’inhumation was given at four, and the usual thing occurred: the bodywashers got the bedding and clothing, and the others the coverlet. God only knows who’ll wear that clothing, who’ll sleep in that bed!” “If the Lord would only send them sense, we’d supply sublimate solution--douche and spray, and zinc for their little long boxes of bones,” mused Dicky, his eyes half shut, as he turned over in his hands some scarabs a place-hunting official had brought him that day. “Well, that isn’t all?” he added, with a quick upward glance and a quizzical smile. His eyes, however, as they fell on Fielding’s, softened in a peculiar way, and a troubled look flashed through them; for Fielding’s face was drawn and cold, though the eyes were feverish, and a bright spot burned on his high cheek-bones. “No, it isn’t all, Dicky. The devil’s in the whole business. Steady, sullen opposition meets us at every hand. Norman’s been here--rode over from Abdallah--twenty-five miles. A report’s going through the native villages, started at Abdallah, that our sanitary agents are throwing yellow handkerchiefs in the faces of those they’re going to isolate.” “That’s Hoskai Bey’s yellow handkerchief. He’s a good man, but he blows his nose too much, and blows it with a flourish.... Has Norman gone back?”