attached to him as a dog to its master--they opened
the wounded man's sodden waistcoat and shirt, and reached the hurt,
which was on the right side of the breast.

Between them they lifted him up gently. Mr. Green would have lent a
hand, but a snarl from Mr. Caryll drove him back in sheer terror, and
alone those two bore the baronet into the next room and laid him on
his bed. Here they did the little that they could; propping him up
and stemming the bleeding, what time they waited through what seemed
a century for the doctor's coming, Mr. Caryll mad--stark mad for the
time--with grief and rage.

The physician arrived at last--a small, bird-like man under a great
gray periwig, with pointed features and little eyes that beamed brightly
behind horn-rimmed spectacles.

In the ante-room he was met by Mr. Green, who in in a few words told
him what had happened. Then the doctor entered the bedchamber alone, and
deposing hat and cane, went forward to make his examination.

Mr. Caryll and Bentley stood aside to give place to him. He stooped,
felt the pulse, examined the lips of the wound, estimating the locality
and direction of the bullet, and his mouth made a clucking sound as of
deprecation.

"Very deplorable, very deplorable!" he muttered. "So hale a man, too,
despite his years. Very deplorable!" He looked up. "A Jacobite, ye say
he is, sir?"

"Will he live?" inquired Mr. Caryll shortly, by way of recalling the man
of medicine to the fact that politics was not the business on which he
had been summoned.

The doctor pursed his lips, and looked at Mr. Caryll over the top of his
spectacles. "He will live--"

"Thank God!" breathed Mr. Caryll.

"--perhaps an hour," the doctor concluded, and never knew how near was
Mr. Caryll to striking him. He turned again to his patient, producing a
probe. "Very deplorable!" Mr. Caryll heard him muttering, parrot-like.

A pause ensued, and a silence broken only by occasional cluckings from
the little doctor, and Mr. Caryll stood by, a prey to an anguish more
poignant than he had ever known. At last there was a groan from the
wounded man. Mr. Caryll started forward.

Sir Richard's eyes were open, and he was looking about him at the
doctor, the valet, and, lastly, at his adopted son. He smiled faintly
at the latter. Then the doctor touched Mr. Caryll's sleeve, and drew him
aside.

"I cannot reach the bullet," he said. "But 'tis no matter for that." He
shook his head solemnly. "Th