Cathie returned in due course with a long face and the news that things were just as bad there, and Stuart and his wife promptly offered to go round and carry out the same measures as had been started at the home settlement. They were given half a dozen _Torch_ men, whom they could ill spare. Evans promised to come round as soon as he possibly could, and the launch chuffed gallantly away to the relief of the still more necessitous on the other side of the island. Stuart could still only limp, and would have been better not to attempt even that, but the healing of his own wound was a small thing compared with that which had to be done. As a matter of fact he limped slightly for the rest of his life in consequence--a most honourable limp. Then followed for all of them a time of patient endurance and endless self-sacrifice, which, trying as it was, still wrought mightily for and in them. They went to and fro in that long open shed with quiet set faces, soothing and alleviating as far as these were possible, whispering hope to the hopeless, and insisting inflexibly on the observance of rules in which the only hope lay, rules the meaning of which these brown children could not understand, and which they broke at every opportunity. Death sat grimly down before them and laid siege to them, and the little band of white-faced women and grim-faced men fought him day by day and life by life, losing heavily but refusing to be beaten. They met one another with such cheerfulness as they could muster, and even with quiet strained smiles at times, but ever with keen apprehensive glances for what each feared any day to find in the other. A time for the trying of souls, with none of the glamour and activities of actual warfare, but with perils infinitely more appalling in their insidiousness and impalpability. "Ech, Jean, my dear!" murmured Aunt Jannet Harvey one evening, as she and Jean and Alison Evans met outside for a few full draughts of sweet sea air. "It's terrible, terrible work. You're looking white; child. I wish you were back in London." "I don't," said Jean cheerfully. "We're doing our appointed work, and I feel as if I'd never done anything worth doing at home. Kenneth says he believes this will be a corner-stone in the building up of the island." "Ay, ay! Well, it's good to be able to take a hopeful view of things when they're about as bad as they can be. And I don't see that they could be much worse." "Oh yes, they could," said Jean quickly. "Some of us might have taken it, which would be very much worse. We have to thank Mr. Evans for that, Alison." "Charlie says he thinks we're through the worst," said Alison quietly. "I wish I could see it," said Aunt Jannet. "We have only had three deaths to-day, and most of the others are past the crisis. It's been a terrible clearance. There's that poor little baby crying again. I must go," and they separated to their various duties.