By the time Dr. Jago reached the Downs, the review was in full swing.
The colonel shouted, the captains shouted, the regiment formed,
re-formed, marched, charged at the double, and fired volleys of blank
cartridges. The General and orderlies galloped from spot to spot
without apparent object; and all was very martial. At last the
doctor grew tired of trotting up and down without being wanted.
He thought with longing of some pools, half a mile away, in a hollow
of the Downs, that contained certain freshwater shells about which he
held a theory. The afternoon was hot. He glanced round--no one
seemed to want him: so he turned Kitty into a grassy defile that led
to the pools, and walked her leisurely away.

Half an hour later he stood, ankle-deep in water, groping for his
shells and oblivious of the review, the firing that echoed far away,
the flight of time--everything. Kitty, with one fore-leg through the
bridle, was cropping on the brink. Minutes passed, and the doctor
raised his head, for the blood was running into it. At that moment
his eye was caught by a scarlet object under a gorse-bush on the
opposite bank. He gave a second look, then waded across towards it.

It was a baby: a baby not a week old, wrapped only in a red
handkerchief.

The doctor bent over it. The infant opened its eyes and began to
wail. At this instant an orderly appeared on the ridge above,
scanning the country. He caught sight of the doctor and descended to
the opposite shore of the pool, where he saluted and yelled his
message. It appeared that some awkward militiaman had blown his
thumb off in the blank cartridge practice and surgical help was
wanted at once.

Doctor Jago dropped the corner of the handkerchief, returned across
the pool, was helped on to Kitty's back and cantered away, the
orderly after him.

In an hour's time, having put on a tourniquet and bandaged the hand,
he was back again by the pool. The baby was still there. He lifted
it and found a scrap of paper underneath. . . .

The doctor returned by devious ways to his home, a full hour before
he was expected. He rode in at the back gate, where to his secret
satisfaction he found no stable-boy. So he stabled Kitty himself,
and crept into his own house like a thief. Nor was it like his
habits to pay, as he did, a visit to the little cupboard (where the
brandy-bottle was kept) underneath the stairs, before entering the
drawing-room, with his face full of gu