“What is that?” asked the boy, with a look of curiosity.
“It is—leprosy!”
“I am not afraid of leprosy!”
“Not afraid of it!” exclaimed the prince, “that may well be, for you have the air of one who fears nothing; but it will kill you for all that, unless the Maker of all defends you, for it is a dread—a terrible—disease that no strength can resist or youth throw off. It undermines the health and eats the flesh off the bones, renders those whom it attacks horrible to look at, and in the end it kills them. But it is possible that you may not yet have caught the infection, poor lad, so you must keep away from me now, and let not a finger touch me henceforth. Your life, I say, may depend on it.”
“I will obey you as to that,” replied Cormac, “now that you are beginning to recover, but I must still continue to put food and water within your reach.”
“Be it so,” rejoined the prince, turning away with a slight groan, for his excitement not less than the conversation had exhausted him. In a few minutes more he was asleep with an expression of profound anxiety stereotyped on his countenance.
It was not long after the fever left him that returning strength enabled Bladud to crawl out of his hut, and soon after that he was able to ramble through the woods in company with Cormac, and with Brownie—that faithful friend who had lain by his master’s side during all his illness. The sparkling river gladdened the eyes, and the bracing air and sunshine strengthened the frame of the prince, so that with the cheerful conversation of Cormac and the gambols of his canine friend he was sometimes led to forget for a time the dark cloud that hung over him.
One day he was struck by something in the appearance of his dog, and, sitting down on a bank, he called it to him. After a few minutes’ careful examination he turned to Cormac with a look of deep anxiety.
“My boy,” he said, “I verily believe that the hound is smitten with my own complaint. In his faithful kindness he has kept by me until I have infected him.”
“That cannot be,” returned Cormac, “for, during my rambles alone, when you were too ill to move, I saw that a great many of the pigs were affected by a skin disease something like that on the dog, and, you know, you could not have infected the pigs, for you have never touched them.”