"I've made it healthy for them.

Highercombe is a painted lie--a pest-house, a charnel-house, full of unwholesome miasmas from its pretty green, its pond covered with water-lilies.

Death lurks in that pond.

There is bad drainage and bad water; the damp oozes through the old brick floors of the houses.

The whole place is as deadly in its way as those West African jungles of which Mr.Jardine told us." They were to see Mr.Jardine later.