As I came down the hilly road to where the village smoked in its hollow,
I had an idea that a stillness lay upon it like the blue mists of autumn
that were over all the countryside. Araglin is usually the noisiest of
villages--cocks crowing, hens cackling, dogs barking, children shouting
at their play. But this morning it was silent.
Nora's uncle's house lay almost outside the village, quite at its
beginning. I thought I should find her there alone, but, as it happened,
when I was close to it, she came out carrying a pail, evidently on her
way to fetch water from a stream which flowed by the roadside and here
and there widened into a little well.
She was close to me before she saw me. When she did at last catch sight
of me I was amazed at the swift change in the expression of her face. It
had been moody enough when I had had time to observe it in repose. Now
something of fear, of horror, leaped into it.
"Go back at once, Miss Bawn, for God's sake!" she cried. "Go back, and
don't be coming near me. There's small-pox in the village and I've been
in and out with them. Half the village is sickening for it; the doctor's
distracted. He's sent word up to Dublin to send nurses and doctors.
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