QUOTE : Joshua took a gulp of his own brew. “Need I have some other cause, when this plague could devastate so many of my patients and neighbors? When, if some of the reports prove true, we might see the town reduced painfully in size, as farmers abandon their holdings and flee to the East?”<br /><br />If the thought of one particular family leaving town, of Clara Brook’s tall figure climbing aboard a wagon and vanishing beyond the horizon, gave him a peculiar twinge, he was hardly obliged to say so.