The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-10-09
THE MOSQUITOES BITE.
BY HAYS BLACKMAN.

BY HAYS BLACKMAN.
 Copyright, 1905, Daily Story Pub. Co.)
 The bank had failed and all that Dr. Mcguire had in the world was swept away in the failure-iiteraiiy aii' for with the savings of his young man hood went the hope of making home for the girl he loved. If it had been an honest failure, money panic or anything save d defaulting cashier, u seemed to the doctor that he could bet ter have borne it. But to feel that his work and his economy had gone TOT naught, that the savings of the nara years of his profession and the nope that had frightened the work were gone, while another man had gotten away m peace to live with the woman for whose pleasure 'this theft had been done, was maddening. The papers made the sensation of day or the departure of the cashier and the wo- man who went with him. Then the de- positors who had lost v~1t oack to their work forgotten but not forget ting.
 Dr. Mcguire gave up his practice in his home town in Missouri where there were memories to haunt him and where the accumulation of riches was slow. and went down to an unhealthy little spot in Louisiana where disease was always present and where medicine
  pered and again he began to hope that some day the home and the girl would be his.
 One day-it was in July and the mer- cury registered a temperature seldom reached back in Missouri-the papers began to be full of rumors of the yell low fever The plague was stealthily creeping across the South. The next day the rumors had become facts and from d city plague ridden the ignorant masses were beginning 10 flee. On the third day two refugees came into the town where pr. Mcguire had taken up his abode They were Italian laborers, and one man was sick when they reached the place. Before night the town had established quarantine sta ton and the two Italians were held there. The one was in the clutches of the fever, and the-other so badly fright encd that he easily fell victim to the disease. The first man died and the second followed his example, but not before the town, in spite of all pre- cautions, had become another of those pest centers whence the line of the plague swept steadily onward, like the creeping evil of prairie fire through dry grass. +.
 Thenceforth there was work for the doctors hands. Early and late through the fever-fretted town he went to his STTdHuS oI I1c uetu EiNNH bhS little study to the fever, but now. with ample opportunity for study afforded him he was too busy bringing healing or closing the eyes of the dead to give time to experimenting with the bites of mosquitoes, or the danger of infec- tion through contact with the disease.
 One evening the doctor went in an swer to a summons to a house with out the town. The place was a lonely one five miles from the city, just within the cordon that the quarantine had drawn about the town. Evidently the house was the home of people of wealth. It was handsome structure hut it was seemingly deserted. The doctor found in an upper room wo- man dying of the plague. Before the end came that night she was able to tell the doctor something that he had long wanted to know. Little by little she whispered her story. She had left the North with man who had done much evil for her sake. He had be- trayed a trust reposed in him. He was thief and a fugitive from justice. They had lived there very quietly to avoid discovery. so quietly and so alone that they had not known of the com ing of the fever until the quarantine Q lines had been drawn around them. The man was a craven coward. shud- dering in fear of the disease and when the woman had shown symptoms of