Time went on, and Joanna was made happy by the birth of a son. During the whole period of her confinement, her husband refused to leave the house, except on Sundays; and he went about, many times in the day, from the attics to the cellars, with his nose in the air, trying to smell fire. There was none, however, to reward his anxious search. No accident happened. The mother and child throve without drawback; and a finer little fellow really was never seen. For two years--two precious years--all went well. Then came one of those seasons of unhealthiness which occur at intervals, as if to warn men of their ignorance of the laws on which their life depends, and to rebuke their carelessness about observing such conditions of health as they do understand. No town was less prepared to encounter an onset of autumnal fever than that in which the Ellisons lived. It had no right to expect health at any time: the history of the place told of plague in old times, and every epidemic which visited England became a pestilence amid its ill-drained streets, its tidal expanse of mud, and its crowded alleys. These were the times when the beloved pastor's fidelity shone out. For weeks he was, night and day, in close attendance on the poor of his flock; and any other poor who were needing help. He could not aid them in the way that a more practical man would have done; but Joanna supplied that kind of ability, while the voice of her husband carried peace and support into many a household, prostrated in grief and dread. He ran far greater risks all the while than he needed, if he could have been taught common prudence. He forgot to eat, and went into unwholesome chambers with an empty stomach and an exhausted frame. In spite of his wife's watchfulness, he omitted to give himself the easy advantages of freshened air, change of clothes, and a sufficiency of wholesome food; and, for one week, he hardly came home to sleep. It was no wonder that, at last, both were down in the fever. The best care failed to save Joanna. She died without having bidden farewell to husband and child. Her husband was in bed delirious, and her boy was in the country, whither he had been taken for safety when the fever entered the house. Mr. Ellison recovered slowly, as might be expected, from the weight upon his mind. There was something strange, it appeared to his physician, in his anxiety to obtain strength to go to London. He was extremely pertinacious about this. The Careys, glad to see that he could occupy himself with any project, humored this, without understanding it. They spoke as if he was going to London when he should be strong enough. They did not dream of his not waiting for this. But, in the dark, damp evening of the day when he dismissed his physician, after Mrs. Carey had gone home, leaving him on the sofa, and promising that her husband should call after tea, he was seen at the coach-office, in the market-place; and he made a night-journey to London.