complained
once or twice of vertigo, was seized with a fit.

Joan, flying to him for protection against the brutal advances of Gunn,
found him lying in a heap behind the door of his small office, and in her
fear called loudly for assistance. A little knot of servants collected,
and stood regarding him stupidly. One made a brutal jest. Gunn,
pressing through the throng, turned the senseless body over with his
foot, and cursing vilely, ordered them to carry it upstairs.

Until the surgeon came, Joan, kneeling by the bed, held on to the
senseless hand as her only protection against the evil faces of Gunn and
his proteges. Gunn himself was taken aback, the innkeeper's death at
that time by no means suiting his aims.

The surgeon was a man of few words and fewer attainments, but under his
ministrations the innkeeper, after a long interval, rallied. The half-
closed eyes opened, and he looked in a dazed fashion at his surroundings.
Gunn drove the servants away and questioned the man of medicine. The
answers were vague and interspersed with Latin. Freedom from noise and
troubles of all kinds was insisted upon and Joan was installed as nurse,
with a promise of speedy assistance.

The assistance arrived late in the day in the shape of an elderly woman,
whose Spartan treatment of her patients had helped many along the silent
road. She commenced her reign by punching the sick man's pillows, and
having shaken him into consciousness by this means, gave him a dose of
physic, after first tasting it herself from the bottle.

After the first rally the innkeeper began to fail slowly. It was seldom
that he understood what was said to him, and pitiful to the beholder to
see in his intervals of consciousness his timid anxiety to earn the good-
will of the all-powerful Gunn. His strength declined until assistance
was needed to turn him in the bed, and his great sinewy hands were
forever trembling and fidgeting on the coverlet.

Joan, pale with grief and fear, tended him assiduously. Her stepfather's
strength had been a proverb in the town, and many a hasty citizen had
felt the strength of his arm. The increasing lawlessness of the house
filled her with dismay, and the coarse attentions of Gunn became more
persistent than ever. She took her meals in the sick-room, and divided
her time between that and her own.

Gunn himself was in a dilemma. With Mullet dead, his power was at an end
and his visions of wealth dissipated.