go gently. For
the master of this house is very ill and the doctor is with him even
now."

Whereupon she opened with a key a door in the weaving chamber of Mr.
Stennis, a door which I had taken for that of a large iron safe, and
conveyed us into a smaller chamber, with a barred window looking across
the moat. Here Mr. Stennis lay on a bed, very pale and haggard, and
with him, his hand upon the sick man's wrist, was Dr. Hector of
Longtown, a man whom every one knew and respected--all the more so
because of a brusque manner and an authoritative speech that caused
people to place great confidence in his judgments.

He looked up astonished and rose to his feet, evidently very angry.

"Hello," he said, "what's this? What right have you to come
masquerading here with your pitchforks and hedging tools? Out of this,
or I'll put my lancet into some of you! I'll wager that I will let
more blood in five minutes than you with your entrenching tools in a
week--ay, and take it from the right spot, too!"

He followed the defeated Breckonsiders to the door, made a gesture as
if to hasten a few laggards with the toe of his boot, and remarked
aloud to Miss Orrin: "I thought you had more sense than to encourage
this sort of thing!"

"Me encourage it!" cried Miss Orrin, indignantly facing him--"you are
under a great mistake, sir!"

"Well, out of this, anyway, all of you," said Dr. Hector. "I will not
have it. If my patient's repose is broken into again, tell them I am
armed--I will take my horsewhip to the pack of them!"

And curiously enough the crowd of justicers melted more quickly merely
with the shame of looking a good man in the face, and before his
horsewhip of righteous indignation, than it would have done before Mad
Jeremy, armed to the teeth.

"I went this morning to the school where Miss Elsie Stennis teaches,"
said Miss Orrin, "and I gave her a message that her grandfather was ill
and wishful to see her. Dr. Hector is a witness that such was Mr.
Stennis's urgent desire. I merely executed it, and all that I know
further is that Miss Stennis has not yet complied with that request."

"Our Frankie saw teacher with you on the meadow pasture at nine this
morning," interrupted a gaunt woman with the bent shoulders of the
outdoor worker and a look of poverty on her face.

"Then your Frankie lied!" retorted Miss Orrin sharply.

And after this direct challenge it needed both Mr. Ablethorpe and Mr.
De la Poer to res