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.  He resolved to feather his nest immediately, and interviewed the surgeon.  The surgeon was ominously reticent, the nurse cheerfully ghoulish.

“Four days I give him,” she said, calmly; “four blessed days, not but what he might slip away at any moment.”

Gunn let one day of the four pass, and then, choosing a time when Joan was from the room, entered it for a little quiet conversation.  The innkeeper’s eyes were open, and, what was more to the purpose, intelligent.

“You’re cheating the hangman, after all,” snarled Gunn.  “I’m off to swear an information.”

The other, by a great effort, turned his heavy head and fixed his wistful eyes on him.

“Mercy!” he whispered.  “For her sake—­give me—­a little time!”

“To slip your cable, I suppose,” quoth Gunn.  “Where’s your money?  Where’s your hoard, you miser?”

Mullet closed his eyes.  He opened them again slowly and strove to think, while Gunn watched him narrowly.  When he spoke, his utterance was thick and labored.

“Come to-night,” he muttered, slowly.  “Give me—­time—­I will make your —­your fortune.  But the nurse-watches.”

“I’ll see to her,” said Gunn, with a grin.  “But tell me now, lest you die first.”