His Other Wife: A Novel — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE INDIAN’'S PATIENT. 67 ‘‘ Well, sir, see any bad signs about the body?” The health officer shook his head ominously, and then, looking round cautiously lest.some bird of the air might hear and carry the matter, he said, under his breath: ‘“‘Typhus/ but don’t breathe a syllable of it, as the whole town will be ina panic. I think it is only a sporadic case, and that prompt use of disinfectants about the locality will suffice to prevent any spreading. The sooner the body’s put in the ground the better.” ‘<Sexton’s to be on hand at seven; mighty near that hour now. Mr. Croft, with the minister and friends of the family expected, start at half-past. Ah! yonder’s a carriage now.” “Tn that case, I’ll stop over and see the obsequies through,” said the health officer, who then withdrew i into the keeper’s lodge, quite out of sight. In due time he managed to mix, unobserved, with the small assemblage of friends who gathered in the chapel awaiting the arrival of the clergyman and the chief mourner, Mr. Croft. These important personages arrived in due time, and the funeral ees were then per- formed with the utmost decency. ‘‘Dust to dust!” and the falling earth on the casket echoed the sad oration, so simple yet so expressive of that last condition of our mortality. The summer stars came out, as tenderly smiling through the cloudless ether as if pain and death were nowhere known upon the earth they blessed with their rays benign and pure. 4 i Eomicboo CS: (E(@)