Up in the castle above the town, a kinsman of the earl’s stayed on after the hurried departure of the great family to another seat in an untouched countryside. Heir to a burdened estate and courtier out of favour, not pleased for reasons of his own to remove with the earl, and liking for another set of reasons the very solitariness of the huge old abode, assured that the infection would not mount the cliff and pass the castle wood, and constitutionally careless of danger, he asked leave to stay on, keep ward with the old housekeeper, the armour in the hall, the earl’s regiment of books, and his own correspondence with foreign scholars. He stayed, and for exercise rode through the country roundabout, and now and then, to satisfy a philosophic curiosity, through the town itself. The ideas of the time as to quarantine were lax enough. The sick were shut away in the houses, purifying fires burned in the streets; if you were careful to avoid any who looked in the faintest degree as though they might be sickening, life and business might go on. The rider from the castle, when he came down into the place, carried with him and put often to his nostrils a quantity of medicated spices and perfumed grains from the Orient, carried in a small perforated silver box. Riding so through the streets one day he came upon Aderhold, his foot upon the doorstep of a marked house. He drew rein. “Ha, the travelling scholar!—Are you physician here?” “Until the trouble is abated.” “Black enough trouble!” said the rider. “Toll, toll! The place is more ghastly than a row of gibbets.” “Abroad,” said Aderhold, “I have seen this sickness in a far worse form. I have hopes that it will not outlast the winter.” The other smelled at his box of spices. “Do you feel no fear, bending over their beds?” Aderhold shook his head. “No. It is my calling.” The man on horseback kept ten feet between them and smelled continually at his silver box, but for the rest was willing to stay and talk. “That seems to be it. The soldier will run from the pest, but face a cannon mouth. The sailor rocks upon a masthead or boards a Spanish galleon with a cutlass between his teeth, but a churchyard ghost turns him into a whimpering child! Your thinker will scale Olympus and enquire of Jove direct, but the sight of torn flesh turns him pale. To each his courage and each his fear! Each a master and each a slave.” “Aye,” said Aderhold briefly, “I know that well.” He put his hand upon the door behind him. “I must not stay.”