However, it was not so much who he was as what he was. Hiram, stripping off the man's clothing, made a discovery that startled him—then actually frightened him.
The fellow's body was burning up with fever—face, hands, chest. What was this? His hand, lightly touching the chest of the victim, revealed an eruption under the skin. It felt almost like small shot—the beginnings of deep-seated postules, perhaps.
Hiram Strong was staggered by the discovery. For a moment he fell back from the bunk. He even turned his gaze on the door, and it is true that he thought of escape.
The highly inflammatory fever; the eruption on the chest. That it was a malignant disease of some kind he knew, and he believed he recognized the symptoms as those of the most deadly of all diseases that ever becomes epidemic in a temperate climate.
"Smallpox!" the young farmer muttered. "This fellow's got it sure enough, and I have exposed myself to it."
CHAPTER X
A FRIEND INDEED
Hiram Strong was not likely to forget the experiences of that night. He did not feel that he was braver than anyone else in remaining with the delirious man and doing what he could for him. Merely, he did not see how he could ever respect himself again if he deserted the stranger.
And to desert the sick man was to desert, as well, Sunnyside Farm and his employment. Hiram could not do that. But he realized that, if this was a case of smallpox as it seemed to be, he had made a pesthouse of the shed in which he had camped for these few weeks, and none of the expected workmen would remain on the place while the case was developing.
However, he plucked up sufficient courage to go back at once to the sick man and complete his preparations for bed. He had already exposed himself to infection, and if he, too, was doomed to the disease, he believed he could do nothing now to prevent it.