The physician eyed him coldly. "You won't? May I ask how you are going to help yourselves?" "We're going to leave on the next steamer." "Oh, no you're not!" the marshal spoke up. "See here, Doc! There's over two hundred of us and we can't stay here; we'll go broke." Gray shrugged his broad shoulders. "Sorry," he said, "but you see I've no choice in the matter. I never saw a case of smallpox that looked worse." "It's a frame-up," growled the spokesman. "Tom hasn't got smallpox any more than I have. You cooked it to keep us here." There was an angry second to this, whereupon the doctor exclaimed: "You think so, eh? Then just come with me." "Where?" "Out to the boat where he is. I'll show you." "You won't show me no smallpox," asserted one of the committee. "Then YOU come with me," the physician urged the leader. "So you can bottle me up, too? No, thank you!" "Get the town photographer with his flashlight. We'll help him make a picture; then you can show it to the others. I promise not to quarantine you." After some hesitation the men agreed to this; the photographer was summoned and joined the party on its way to the floating pest-house. It was not a pleasant place in which they found Tom Slater, for the cabin of the fishing-boat was neither light nor airy, but Eliza had done much to make it agreeable. The sick man was propped up in his bunk and playing solitaire, but he left off his occupation to groan as the new-comers came alongside. When the cause of the visit had been made known, however, he rebelled. "I won't pose for no camera fiend," he declared, loudly. "It ain't decent and I'm too sick. D'you take me for a bearded lady or a living skeleton?" "These men think you're stalling," Dr. Gray told him. "Who? Me?" Slater rolled an angry eye upon the delegation. "I ain't sick, eh? I s'pose I'm doing this for fun? I wish you had it, that's all." The three members of the committee of investigation wisely halted at the foot of the companionway stairs where the fresh air fanned them; they were nervous and ill at ease. Drawing his covers closer, Slater shouted: "Close that hatch, you bone-heads! I'm blowing away!" The photographer ventured to remonstrate. "It's mighty close in here, Doc. Is it safe to breathe the bugs?" "Perfectly safe," Gray assured him. "At least Miss Appleton hasn't suffered yet." As a matter of fact the patient betrayed no symptoms of a wasting illness, for his cheeks were ruddy, he had eaten three hearty meals each day, and the enforced rest had done him good, so the committee saw nothing about him to satisfy their suspicions. But when Tom weakly called upon them for assistance in rising they shrank back and one of them exclaimed: "I wouldn't touch you with a fish-pole."