By the end of the following week, the child—incredibly—had recovered and no one else in the Murray household had come down with the disease and neither had anyone they had been in contact with.

On being told that they could leave the house, Murray smiled for the first time. ‘Thank the Lord. You can pull down the wall and we will be free to go back to our lives.’

But they left the house without even the clothes on their backs. Everything that had been the Murrays’s was left behind. There was no shortage of explosives in the town and powder was set at strategic points in the house. Lighted brands were thrown in and, as the fire lit up the town, Jacob Murray knelt on the road, head in his hands, and wept.

The town council were not without compassion and an empty house had been found for Murray and his child and the town rallied with donations of household items and clothing for the three unfortunates, but Murray was in no state to understand the enormity of his loss. Nor did it help that Charles Cowper took it upon himself to berate the man for his stupidity in taking his wife back to his home instead of into the isolation of a smallpox hospital.

Bowen sat at the uneven table in his cabin and wrote to the Health Department in Melbourne advising that the outbreak had been contained.

‘Credit for the early detection and measures adopted to ensure the safety of the inhabitants of Maiden’s Creek must be given to a medical person, trained in America, who happens to be on our goldfields at the present time …’ he read aloud.

‘Don’t mention me,’ Caleb said, pouring them both whiskey.

‘Why ever not?’

‘I have no standing here,’ Caleb said.

Bowen tapped his fingers on the table. ‘Do you have any proof of your qualification?’

Caleb shrugged. A battered leather folio in his box contained the yellowed and torn diploma from the medical school in Washington he had attended, and the long out-of-date certificate of his registration to practice in Virginia. He often wondered why he still carried these papers, but perhaps this small corner of his life was one he could not quite let go.

He showed them to Bowen, who nodded and handed them back.

‘I need to make this report in person,’ he said. ‘If I take the coach tomorrow, I will be back in a week. You can manage.’

‘A week! I keep telling you, Bowen. I haven’t practiced medicine for years and I’ve no legal standing.’

Bowen waved a hand. ‘I don’t think folk around here will be asking to see your qualifications. You’ll be fine. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t appreciate a bit of extra income.’