"I see you are!" remarked the physician, emphatically, catching the arms of his chair and drawing his feet closer in. "You've been smiling worse than a boy with a love-letter." "I've been hoping you'd ask me what's the matter." "Well, then, Richling, what is the matter?" "Mary has a daughter." "What!" cried the Doctor, springing up with a radiant face, and grasping Richling's hand in both his own. Richling laughed aloud, nodded, laughed again, and gave either eye a quick, energetic wipe with all his fingers. "Doctor," he said, as the physician sank back into his chair, "we want to name"--he hesitated, stood on one foot and leaned again against the shelf--"we want to call her by the name of--if we may"-- The Doctor looked up as if with alarm, and John said, timidly,--"Alice!" Dr. Sevier's eyes--what was the matter? His mouth quivered. He nodded and whispered huskily:-- "All right." After a long pause Richling expressed the opinion that he had better be going, and the Doctor did not indicate any difference of conviction. At the door the Doctor asked:-- "If the fever should break out this summer, Richling, will you go away?" "No." CHAPTER XXXVII. PESTILENCE. On the twentieth of June, 1858, an incident occurred in New Orleans which challenged special attention from the medical profession. Before the month closed there was a second, similar to the first. The press did not give such matters to the public in those days; it would only make the public--the advertising public--angry. Times have changed since--faced clear about: but at that period Dr. Sevier, who hated a secret only less than a falsehood, was right in speaking as he did. "Now you'll see," he said, pointing downward aslant, "the whole community stick its head in the sand!" He sent for Richling. "I give you fair warning," he said. "It's coming." "Don't cases occur sometimes in an isolated way without--anything further?" asked Richling, with a promptness which showed he had already been considering the matter. "Yes." "And might not this"-- "Richling, I give you fair warning." "Have you sent your cousins away, Doctor?" "They go to-morrow." After a silence the Doctor added: "I tell you now, because this is the time to decide what you will do. If you are not prepared to take all the risks and stay them through, you had better go at once." "What proportion of those who are taken sick of it die?" asked Richling. "The proportion varies in different seasons; say about one in seven or eight. But your chances would be hardly so good, for you're not strong, Richling, nor well either." Richling stood and swung his hat against his knee. "I really don't see, Doctor, that I have any choice at all. I couldn't go to Mary--when she has but just come through a mother's pains and dangers--and say, 'I've thrown away seven good chances of life to run away from one bad one.' Why, to say nothing else, Reisen can't spare me." He smiled with boyish vanity.