Hiram Strong was not likely to forget the experiences of that night. He did not feel that he was braver than anyone else in remaining with the delirious man and doing what he could for him. Merely, he did not see how he could ever respect himself again if he deserted the stranger. And to desert the sick man was to desert, as well, Sunnyside Farm and his employment. Hiram could not do that. But he realized that, if this was a case of smallpox as it seemed to be, he had made a pesthouse of the shed in which he had camped for these few weeks, and none of the expected workmen would remain on the place while the case was developing. However, he plucked up sufficient courage to go back at once to the sick man and complete his preparations for bed. He had already exposed himself to infection, and if he, too, was doomed to the disease, he believed he could do nothing now to prevent it. Nevertheless, there was something extremely dreadful to him in the thought of smallpox--mainly, perhaps, because of the possible scars to be left on the body. Hiram neglected the unfortunate man not at all, however. Distasteful as the thought of handling him was, the youth that night did all in his power for the stranger's comfort. He kept water at boiling temperature on the stove, and made a wash with soda with which he bathed the sick man several times to reduce the fever. The purple face, the puffed eyelids, the drooling lips, altogether made the victim a most unpleasant looking object. Yet Hiram thought that, in his right mind and free of fever, this fellow who called himself Orrin Post might be a very good looking man indeed. And he judged his age to be not far along in the twenties. Hiram got no sleep at all. The patient began to thrash about toward morning and was more delirious than before. Occasionally he seemed to be taken with a slight chill, and his nurse kept the temperature of the little room much higher than 70°. "This might be good for that corn test," Hiram once thought. But he was not giving much attention to anything but his care of Orrin Post. He harked back to Mother Atterson's recipes for caring for persons who were ill. He found a stone bottle and filled that with hot water and put it to the patient's feet to counteract the chills. He wished he had some medicine to give him. Hiram wondered how he could send for a doctor in the morning. Whom could he get to go? And would a doctor come to attend a smallpox patient--any doctor but the physician for the county's poor? Occasionally he examined that eruption. It was spreading over the man's chest. If it _was_ smallpox-- What a night that was! At daybreak--a chill and darksome dawn--Hiram went to the door, looked out, and finally stepped out and closed the door behind him. His eyelids were swollen for lack of sleep. He was tired to the bone!