Joseph had laid a hand on his brother's arm to draw him away, when he was alarmed by seeing his brother's eyes fixed upon the far corner of the room with such an extraordinary expression of amaze and horror, that for a moment he feared he must have been suddenly stricken by the plague and was going off into the awful delirium he had heard described.
A poignant fear and remorse seized him, lest he had been the means of bringing his brother into this peril and having caused his attack, if indeed it were one, and he pulled him harder by the arm to get him away.

But with a strange choked cry Benjamin broke from him, and running across the room he flung himself upon his knees by the side of a bed, crying in a lamentable voice: "Reuben--Reuben--Reuben!" It was Joseph's turn now to gaze in horror and dismay.

Could that be Reuben--that cadaverous, death-like creature, with the livid look of a plague patient, lying like one in a trance which can only end in the awakening of death?
Was Benjamin dreaming?
or was it really their brother?
But how could he by any possibility be here, so far away from home, so utterly beyond the limits of his own district?
The doctor had approached Benjamin and had pulled him back from the bedside quickly, though not unkindly.
"What are you doing here, child ?" he said.

"Have we not enough upon our hands without having sound persons mad enough to seek to add to the numbers of the sick?
Is he a relation of yours?
"Well, well, well, he will be looked after here better than you can do it.

Your brother?
Well, he has been four days here, and is one of those I have hope for.