“Sam!”

“Sam Zeally, Miss.”

“But I don’t understand,” Dorothea stammered; with a sharp suspicion of treachery, she pushed the girl from her.  “Was Zeally mounting guard tonight?  If I thought—­don’t tell me it was a trap!  Oh, you wicked girl!”

“No; it wasn’t,” answered Polly, sulkily.  “I don’t know nothing of Sam’s movements.  But he might be hanging about the house; and if he saw a man talking to me, he’s just as jealous as fire.”

She broke off at the sound of voices below the window.  The ray of a lantern, as the search-party jolted it, flashed and danced on wall and ceiling of the dim boudoir.  A sharp exclamation announced that Raoul was discovered.  A confused muttering followed; and then Dorothea heard Endymion’s voice calling up to Mudge from the bottom of the trench.

“Run to Miss Westcote’s room and tell her we shall require lint and bandages.  There is no cause for alarm, assure her; say there has been an accident—­a Frenchman overtaken out of bounds and wounded—­I think, not seriously.  If she be gone to bed, get the medicine chest and the key and bring them into the kitchen.”

Dorothea had charge of the Bayfield medicine chest, and kept it in a cupboard of the boudoir.  She groped for it, pulled open drawer after drawer, rifled them for lint and linen, and by the time Mudge tapped on the door, stood ready with the chest under one arm and a heap of bandages in the other.

“In the kitchen, Mr. Endymion said.  I am coming at once; take the chest, run, and have as many candles lit as possible.”

Mudge ran; Dorothea followed—­with Polly behind her, trembling like a leaf.

The two women reached the kitchen as the party entered with Raoul, and supported him to a chair beside the dying fire.  His face was colourless, and he lay back and closed his eyes weakly as Endymion stooped to examine the wounded leg, with Narcissus in close attendance, and the others standing respectfully apart—­Mudge, the two footmen (in their shirt sleeves), an under-gardener named Best, one of the housemaids, and Corporal Zeally by the door in regimentals, with his japanned shako askew and his Brown Bess still in his hand.  Behind his shoulder, three or four of the women servants hung about the doorway and peered in, between curiosity and terror.

It was a part of Endymion’s fastidiousness that the sight of blood—­ that is, of human blood—­turned his stomach.  In her distress Dorothea could not help admiring how he conquered this aversion; how he knelt in his spick-and-span evening dress, and, after turning back his ruffles, unlaced the prisoner’s soaked shoe and rolled down the stocking.

He looked up gratefully as she entered.  In such emergencies Narcissus was worse than useless; but Dorothea had the nursing instinct, and her brothers recognised it.  The sight of a wound or a hurt steadied her wits, and she became practical and helpful at once.