away, wise to the bitter fact that the spike would
be full up.

Conversation was slack at first, standing there,
till the man on one side of me and the man on the
other side of me discovered that they had been in
the smallpox hospital at the same time, though a
full house of sixteen hundred patients had pre
vented their becoming acquainted. But they made
up for it, discussing and comparing the more loath
some features of their disease in the most cold
blooded, matter-of-fact way. I learned that the
average mortality was one in six, that one of them
had been in three months and the other three
months and a half, and that they had been rotten
wi it. Whereat my flesh began to creep and crawl,
and I asked them how long they had been out. One
had been out two weeks, and the other three weeks.
Their faces were badly pitted (though each assured
the other that this was not so), and further, they
showed me in their hands and under the nails the
smallpox seeds still working out. Nay, one of
them worked a seed out for my edification, and
pop it went, right out of his flesh into the air. I
tried to shrink up smaller inside my clothes, and
I registered a fervent though silent hope that it had
not popped on me.

In both instances, I found that the smallpox
was the cause of their being on the doss, which

[[92]]

p091 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p092w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p093

v?