she was holding her apron to her
eyes.

"He's coming round nicely, praise the Lord," she said, cheerily.

"I remember," said Jason, in a weak voice. "Did I faint?"

"Faint, love?" said the good soul, putting her deaf ear close to his
lips. "Why, it's fever, love; brain fever."

"What time is it?" said Jason.

"Time, love? Lord help us, what does the boy want with the time? But
it's just the way with all of them. Mid-evening, love."

"What day is it--Sunday?"

"Sunday, love? No, but Tuesday. It was on Sunday you fell senseless,
poor boy."

"Where was that?"

"Where? Why, where but in the Cathedral yard, just at the very minute
the weddiners were coming out at the door."

And hearing this Jason's face broke into a smile like sunshine, and
he uttered a loud cry of relief. "Thank God. Oh, thank God."

But while an angel of hope seemed to bring him good tidings of a
great peril averted, and even as a prayer gushed from his torn heart,
he remembered the vision of his delirium, and knew that he was
forever a bereaved and broken man. At that his face, which had been
red as his hair, grew pale as ashes, and a low cunning came over him,
and he wondered if he had betrayed himself in his unconsciousness.

"Have I been delirious?" he asked.

"Delirious, love? Oh, no, love, no; only distraught a little and
cursing sometimes, the Saints preserve us," said the old landlady in
her shrill treble.

Jason remembered that the old woman was deaf, and gathering that she
alone had nursed him, and that no one else had seen him since his
attack, except her deaf husband and a druggist from the High Street
who had bled him, he smiled and was satisfied.

"Lord bless me, how he mends," said the hearty old woman, and she
gave him the look of an affectionate dog.

"And now, good soul, I am hungry and must make up for all this
fasting," said Jason.

"Ay, ay, and that you must, lad," said the old woman, and off she
went to cook him something to eat.

But his talk of hunger had been no more than a device to get rid of
her, for he knew that the kind creature would try to restrain him
from rising. So when she was gone he stumbled to his feet, feeling
very weak and dazed, and with infinite struggle and sweat tugged on
his clothes--for they had been taken off--and staggered out into the
streets.

It was night, and the clouds hung low as if snow might be coming, but
the town seemed very light, as with bonfires round about it and
ro