more." The thing which moved and stirred him was his
knowledge that when he had thought of her she had also been thinking
of him, or of what deeply concerned him. When he had said to himself,
tossing on his pillow, "What would she DO?" she had been planning
in such a way as answered his question. Each morning, when the day's
supplies arrived, it was as if he had received a message from her.

As the people in the cottages felt the power of his temperament and
depended upon him, so, also, did the patients in the ballroom ward. The
feeling had existed from the outset and increased daily. The doctors and
nurses told one another that his passing through the room was like the
administering of a tonic. Patients who were weak and making no effort,
were lifted upon the strong wave of his will and carried onward towards
the shore of greater courage and strength.

Young Doctor Thwaite met him when he came in one morning, and spoke in a
low voice:

"There is a young man behind the screen there who is very low," he said.
"He had an internal haemorrhage towards morning, and has lost his pluck.
He has a wife and three children. We have been doing our best for him
with hot-water bottles and stimulants, but he has not the courage
to help us. You have an extraordinary effect on them all, Lord Mount
Dunstan. When they are depressed, they always ask when you are coming
in, and this man--Patton, his name is--has asked for you several times.
Upon my word, I believe you might set him going again."

Mount Dunstan walked to the bed, and, going behind the screen, stood
looking down at the young fellow lying breathing pantingly. His
eyes were closed as he laboured, and his pinched white nostrils drew
themselves in and puffed out at each breath. A nurse on the other side
of the cot had just surrounded him with fresh hot-water bottles.

Suddenly the sunken eyelids flew open, and the eyes met Mount Dunstan's
in imploring anxiousness.

"Here I am, Patton," Mount Dunstan said. "You need not speak."

But he must speak. Here was the strength his sinking soul had longed
for.

"Cruel bad--goin' fast--m' lord," he panted.

Mount Dunstan made a sign to the nurse, who gave him a chair. He sat
down close to the bed, and took the bloodless hand in his own.

"No," he said, "you are not going. You'll stay here. I will see to
that."

The poor fellow smiled wanly. Vague yearnings had led him sometimes, in
the past, to wander into chapels or stop and l