Grumper achieved the snort of his life.

It may have penetrated Dam’s comatose brain, indeed, for at that moment, with a moan and a shudder, he struggled to a sitting posture.

“The Snake,” he groaned, and collapsed again.

“What the Devil!” roared the General.  “Get up, you miserable, whining cur!  Get indoors, you bottle-fed squalling workhouse brat!  Get out of it, you decayed gentlewoman!” ...  The General bade fair to have a fit of his own.

Lucille flung herself at him.

“Can’t you see he’s very ill, Grumper?  Have you no heart at all?  Don’t be so cruel ... and ... stupid.”

The General gasped....  Insults!...  From a chit of a girl!...  “Ill!” he roared.  “What the Devil does he want to be ill for now, here, to-day?  I never ...”

Dam struggled to his feet with heroic efforts at self-mastery, and stood swaying, twitching, trembling in every limb, and obviously in an agony of terror.

“The Snake!” he said again.

“Ha!” barked General Stukeley.  “Been fighting forty boa-constrictors, what?  Just had a fearful struggle with five thousand fearful pythons, what?  There’ll be another Victoria Cross in your family soon, if you’re not careful.”

“You are an unjust and cruel old man,” stormed Lucille, stamping her foot at the hitherto dread Grumper.  “He is ill, I tell you!  You’ll be ill yourself someday.  He had a fit.  He’ll be all right in a minute.  Let him go in and lie down.  It wasn’t the snake at all.  There wasn’t any snake—­where he was.  He is just ill.  He has been working too hard.  Let him go in and lie down.”

“Let him go to the Devil,” growled the infuriated General, and turned to such few of the guests as had not displayed sufficient good sense and good taste to go elsewhere and resume their interrupted games, tea, or scandal, to remark:—­

“I really apologize most sincerely and earnestly for this ridiculous scene.  The boy should be in petticoats, apparently.  I hope he won’t encounter a mouse or a beetle to-night.  Let’s all—­er—­come and have a drink.”

Lucille led her shaking and incoherent lover indoors and established him on a sofa, had a fire lit for him as he appeared to be deathly cold, and sat holding his clammy hand until the arrival of Dr. Jones.

As well as his chattering teeth and white frozen lips would allow, he begged for forgiveness, for understanding.  “He wasn’t really wholly a coward in essentials.” ...

The girl kissed the contorted face and white lips passionately.  Dr. Jones prescribed bed and “complete mental and bodily rest”.  He said he would “send something,” and in a cloud of wise words disguised the fact that he did not in the least know what to do.  It was not in his experience that a healthy young Hercules, sound as a bell, without spot or blemish, should behave like an anaemic, neurotic girl....

Dam passed the night in the unnameable, ghastly hell of agony that he knew so well and that he wondered to survive.