effusively. I followed him into the street and, when the Hadfields were out of hearing, made bold with the question that was tormenting me. “If you please, sir—the child’s fever—could it be the Plague?” The man waved a gloved hand dismissively and did not even turn to look at me. “No chance of it,” he said. “The Plague, by God’s grace, has not been in our shire these score years. And the child has no Plague tokens on his body. It is a putrid fever merely, and if the parents follow my instructions, he will live.”
