But they made up for it, discussing and comparing the more loathsome features of their disease in the most cold-blooded, matter-of-fact way.

I learned that the average mortality was one in six, that one of them had been in three months and the other three months and a half, and that they had been "rotten wi' it." Whereat my flesh began to creep and crawl, and I asked them how long they had been out.

One had been out two weeks, and the other three weeks.

Their faces were badly pitted (though each assured the other that this was not so), and further, they showed me in their hands and under the nails the smallpox "seeds" still working out.

Nay, one of them worked a seed out for my edification, and pop it went, right out of his flesh into the air.