While the Squire ate in silence, John waited until his uncle said, "Come into the library." Here he filled his pipe and took the match John offered. "There are many curious varieties of man, John. There is the man who prefers a rocking-chair to the saddle. It's queer—very queer; and he is as much afraid of a horse as I am—of—I don't know what."
The Squire's memory failed to answer the call. "What are you grinning at, you young scamp?"
"Oh, Mr. Rivers did say, Uncle Jim, something about bats."
"Yes, that's it—bats—and I do suppose every one has his especial fear. Ah! quite inexplicable nonsense!—fears like mine about bats, or your aunt's about dogs, but also fears that make a man afraid that he will not face a danger that is a duty. When we had smallpox at the mills, soon after Rivers came here, he went to the mill-town and lived there a month, and nursed the sick and buried the dead. At last he took the disease lightly, but it left a mark or two on his forehead. That I call—well, heroic. Confound that rocking-chair! How it squeaks!"
John was too intently listening to hear anything but the speaker who declared heroic the long lean man with the pale face and the eyes like search-lights. John waited; he wanted to hear something more.
"Did many die, uncle?"
"Oh, yes. The men had fought McGregor about vaccination. Many died. There was blindness too. Supplies failed—no one would come in from the farms."
John waited with the fear of defect in his ideal man. Then he ventured,
"And Aunt Ann, was she here?"
"No, I sent her away when I went to Milltown."
"Oh! you were there too, sir?"