anxiety.

Just then Stephen gave a great sigh, and opened his eyes.

"Where am I?" he asked feebly.

"All among friends," said Archie, "and going to have a jolly time, and
be nursed up, and made as strong as a horse.--Now, Dr. Grey, let's get
a cab. I'll go and call one," and he bustled off.

Outside he met a disgusting sight. It was Timothy Lingard, staggering
towards the mill, very much the worse for what he had been drinking.

"You can't go there; go home at once," said Archie.

"Night-watch--caretaker--said I'd be here," mumbled Timothy, trying
to brush past him; and then finding Archie still stood as a hindrance
in front of him, he tried to strike him--of course not knowing who it
was--only he missed his aim, and fell down into the gutter.

There Archie left him, to seek a cab, which is not an easy thing to
find at three o'clock in the morning. However, before long he did
succeed in procuring one, and in it Stephen was conveyed to the
nearest hospital.

* * * * *

Mr. Fairfax was just starting for his office the next morning when he
was accosted by a respectable-looking working-man.

"Do I speak to Mr. Fairfax, sir?" he asked, touching his hat.

"Yes, that is my name. Can I do anything for you?"

"Would you be good enough, sir, to tell me where my son, Stephen
Bennett, is? I hear he was taken ill last night."

"He's in the hospital. I'll take you--I was just going there myself,"
said Archie, who was with his father.

"Your son has had a hard life, I fear, in your absence," said Mr.
Fairfax, glancing curiously at the stranger, who did not look at all
like a man capable of crime.

"Yes, sir," he answered somewhat bitterly; "it has pleased the
Almighty to send me a heavy trial. First, I lost my wife; then I was
accused, along with my fellow-workers in a brick-yard, of stealing
fagots. I was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and my time
would have been out next week. My boy, which he's one in a
thousand--though he was that weakly he was hardly fit for work--he
brought the little 'uns, five of 'em, all under fourteen, to this
place. 'We shan't be known at Longcross, father,' he says, 'and I'll
work for 'em all till you're out.' So he come here. And yesterday they
come to me in the jail, and they says, 'Bennett, we find you're
innocent. The man what took the fagots, he's up and confessed, and he
says as you've had nothing to do with it.' So they wrote me this paper