aims:--"Oh dear!--why did you send him? Dr. Merridew is at the
Castle." For she knew Sir Coupland before he had his knighthood. Thereon
the other groom is starting to summon him, but she stops him. She will
go herself; then the great man will be sure to come at once.

* * * * *

Sir Coupland Ellicott Merridew, F.R.S., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., etc.--a
whole alphabet of them--was enjoying this moment of the first unalloyed
holiday he had had for two years, by lying in bed till nine o'clock. If
it made him too late for the collective breakfast in the new
dining-room--late Jacobean--he had only to ring for a private subsection
for himself. He had had a small cup of coffee at eight, and was
congratulating himself on it, and was now absolutely in a position not
to give any consideration to anything whatever.

But cruel Destiny said No!--he was not to round off his long night's
rest with a neat peroration. He was interrupted in the middle of it by
what seemed, in his dream-world, just reached, the loud crack of a bone
that disintegrated under pressure; but that when he woke was clearly a
stone flung at his window. What a capital instance of dream-celerity,
thought he! Fancy the first half of that sound having conjured up the
operating-theatre at University College Hospital, fifteen years ago, and
a room full of intent faces he knew well, and enough of the second half
being available for him to identify it as--probably--the _poltergeist_
that infested that part of the house. Perhaps, if he took no notice, the
_poltergeist_ would be discouraged and subside. Anyhow, he wouldn't
encourage it.

But the sound came again, and the voice surely of Gwendolen, his very
great friend, with panic in it, and breathlessness as of a voice-reft
runner. He was out of bed in twenty, dressing-gowned in forty, at the
window in fifty, seconds. Not a minute lost!

"What's all that?... A man shot! All right, I'll come."

"Oh, do! It's so dreadful. Stephen Solmes shot him by mistake for a dog
... at least, I'll tell you directly."

"All right. I'll come now." And in less than half an hour the speaker is
kneeling by the body on the grass; and those who found it, with others
who have gathered round even in this solitude, are waiting for the first
authoritative word of possible hope. Not despair, with a look like that
on the face of a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.

"There is a little blood coming still. Wait ti