The greatest social event that had taken place in consequence of the epidemic was, that Mr. Dundas had made acquaintance with his new tenant at Lionnet. Full of painful memories for him as the place was, he could not let the poor fellow die, he said, with no Christian soul near him. As a landlord he felt that he owed this mark of humanity to one of whom, if nothing absolutely good was known, neither was there anything absolutely bad, save that negative misdemeanor of not coming to church. As this was not an unpardonable offence to a man who had traveled much if he had thought little, Mr. Dundas let his humanity get the upper hand without much difficulty. By which it came about that he and his new tenant became friends, as the phrase goes, and that thus another paragraph was added to the restricted page of life as North Aston knew it. CHAPTER XXVIII. ONLY A DREAM. Of all those who lived through the fever, poor Alick Corfield's case had been the most desperate while it lasted. Mr. Gryce, his fellow-sufferer, had been up and about his usual work, extracting Aryan roots and impaling Lepidoptera for a month and more, while Alick was still in bed among ice-bags and Condy's Fluid, and as bad as at the beginning--indeed, worse, having had a relapse which nothing but his wiry constitution, backed by his mother's scientific nursing, could have pulled him through. Gradually the danger passed, and this time his convalescence was solid, and, though slow, uninterrupted. He began to creep about the house by the aid of sticks and arms, and he came down stairs for the first time on the day when the Harrowbys and Birketts returned home; but he remained in strict quarantine, and Steel's Corner was scrupulously avoided by the neighbors as the local lazaretto which it would be sinful to invade. By all but Leam, who went daily to ask after the invalid, and to keep the mother company for exactly half an hour by the clock. One day when she went on her usual errand Mrs. Corfield met her at the hall-door, "Alick will be glad to see you, my dear," she called out, radiant with happiness, as the girl crossed the threshold. "We are in the drawing-room to-day, as brisk and bonny as a bird: such a treat for him, poor dear!" "I am glad," said Leam, who held a basket of early spring flowers in her hand. "Now you are happy." Tears came into the poor mother's haggard eyes. "Happy, child! You do not know what I feel," she said with tremulous emotion. "Only a mother who has been so near to the loss of her dearest, so near to heartbreak and despair, as I have been, can know the blessed joy of the reprieve." "How you love him!" said Leam in a half whisper. "I loved mamma like that."