Stephan hesitated.
“My wife, who was of this nation, had been born in these hills here. She told us of these hills as of Paradise. So we sent again a few of our number here. With the gold we had brought away, we bought ground. Then, a little by a little, all of us came. We kept far from other people. We did them no harm. Now they want to kill us, because Vladimir doubtless told them before he died that we were lepers, and because we are lepers, we must die.”
He turned grimly to Cunningham and bared his forearm. And the skin of that forearm was silvery.
Cunningham’s tongue would not move. Gray shivered.
“I’ll—I’ll admit,” he said shakenly, “I didn’t bargain for this. Good God!” He stared at the somber-faced Strangers with a queer terror. Then he shook himself suddenly. “But look here——!”
Cunningham found himself speaking hoarsely. “Not Maria!” he gasped. “Not Maria!”
Stephan’s face, the color of ashes, had only compassion upon it as he watched Cunningham.
“Wait a bit,” cried Gray. “Wait a bit! Stephan! That—that thing on your arm. It comes first on the elbows and knees, where the clothing rubs! Redness first, then this?”
“That is it,” said Stephan quietly. “We have seen our children appear so. We have tried—ah, how we have tried!—to keep them from being Strangers too. But it is in the blood. Maria has showed it not even yet. But in time to come——”
“Nobody,” panted Gray excitedly, “ever got it over fifty years of age!”