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Curtis did not at once reply. He gravely took the empty bowl from Sybil’s hand, and it was upon her that his eyes rested as he finally said, “Do you think you could manage without me?”

She looked up with perfect steadiness.

“Certainly I could. Please do as you think right!”

“What about Beelzebub?” he said.

Mercer made a restless movement.

“He will be on his legs again in a day or two. One of the men must look after him.”

“I shall look after him,” Sybil said, with a calmness of resolution that astounded both her hearers.

Mercer put his hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. It was Curtis who spoke with the voice of authority.

“You will have to take care of her,” he said bluntly. “Bear in mind what I said to you last night! I will show you how to treat the arm. And then I think I had better go. It may prevent an epidemic.”

Thereafter he assumed so businesslike an air that he seemed to Sybil to be completely transformed. There never had been much deference in his attitude towards Mercer, but he treated him now without the smallest ceremony. He was as a man suddenly awakened from a long lethargy. From that moment to the moment of his departure his activity was unceasing.

Sybil and Mercer watched him finally ride away, and it was not till he was actually gone that the fact that she was left absolutely alone with her husband came home to her.

With a sense of shock she realized it, and those words of Beelzebub’s–the words that she had been so resolutely forcing into the back of her mind–came crowding back upon her with a vividness and persistence that were wholly beyond her control.

What was she going to do, she wondered? What could she do with this awful, this unspeakable doubt pressing ever upon her? It might all be a mistake, a hideous mistake on Beelzebub’s part. She had no great faith in his intelligence. It might be that by some evil chance his muddled brain had registered the name of Bowker Creek in connection with the fight which she did not for a moment doubt had at some time taken place. Beelzebub was never reliable in the matter of details, and he had not been able to answer her question regarding the place.

Over and over again she tried to convince herself that her fear was groundless, and over and over again the words came back to her, refusing to be forgotten or ignored–“the white man from Bowker Creek.” Who was this white man whom Mercer had fought, this man who had tried to shoot him? She shuddered whenever she pictured the conflict. She was horribly afraid.

Yet she played her part unfalteringly, and Mercer never suspected the seething anguish of suspense and uncertainty that underlay her steadfast composure. He thought her quieter than usual, deemed her shy; and he treated her in consequence with a tenderness of which she had not believed him capable–a tenderness that wrung her heart.

She was thankful when the morning came, and he left her, for the strain was almost more than she could endure.

But in the interval of solitude that ensued she began to build up her strength anew. Alone with her doubts, she faced the fact that she would probably never know the truth. She could not rely upon Beelzebub for accuracy, and she could not refer to her husband. The only course open to her was to bury the evil thing as deeply as might be, to turn her face resolutely away from it, to forget–oh, Heaven, if she could but forget!

All through that day Beelzebub slept, curled up in the straw. She visited him several times, but he needed nothing. Nature had provided her own medicine for his tortured body. In the evening a man came with a note from Curtis. The case was undoubtedly one of smallpox, he wrote, and he did not think his patient would recover. There was a good deal of panic at Wallarroo, and he had removed the man to a cattle-shed at some distance from the township where they were isolated. There were one or two things he needed which he desired Mercer to send on the following day to a place he described, whence he himself would fetch them.