"
Carroll's mind reverted to his companion's ready revolver.
"Yourself, for instance?" he suggested.
"Why, yes."
"Who was she?"
There was left in the Southerner's manner no trace of the cross-
examiner. Suspicion had departed from him at the first sight of
that old and still face, leaving only sympathy and pity.
"My patient."
"Have you been running a private hospital up here?"
"Oh, no. I took her because there was no other place fit for her
to go to. And I had to keep her presence secret, because there's a
law against harboring lepers here. A pretty cruel brute of a law
it is, too."
"Leprosy!" exclaimed Carroll, looking at that strange silvery face
with a shudder. "Isn't it fearfully contagious?"
"Not in any ordinary sense. I was trying a new serum on her, and
had planned to smuggle her across to Curacao, when this ended it."
"Curacao? Then that pass for yourself and wife--By the way, that
and your coat are over in the thicket, where I dropped them."
"Thank you. But it doesn't say 'wife.' It says simply 'a woman.'"
"And you were encumbering yourself with an unknown leper, at a
time like this, just as an act of human kindness?" There was
something almost reverential in Carroll's voice.
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