“I gave Lady Rose the paper.  He raved most horribly for an hour or two, as if all the foul talk of his pot-house had got into his brain,” said Herbert, with a shudder.  “Rector, Rector, pray for me, that I mayn’t come out with that at any rate.  It has haunted me ever since.  Well, at last he slept, and woke up sinking but conscious, knew me, and began to ask if this was death, and was frightened, clutching at me, and asking to be held, and what he could do.  I told him at least he could undo a wrong, if he would only authorize us to use what he said to clear Douglas; and then, as Sister Margaret had come across, I wrote as well as I could:  “George Gadley authorizes what he said to the Rev. Julius Charnock to be used as evidence;” and I suppose he saw us sign it, if he could see at all, for his sight was nearly gone.”

Julius drew a long breath.

“And now, what was it?” said Herbert.

“Well, the trio—­Moy, young Proudfoot, and Tom Vivian—­detained a letter of my mother’s, with a cheque in it, and threw the blame of it on Archie Douglas.  They thought no one was in the office but themselves; but Gadley was a clerk there, and was in the outer room, where he heard all.  He came to Moy afterwards, and has been preying on him for hush-money ever since.”

“And this will set things straight?”

“Yes.  How to set about the public justification I do not yet see; but with your father, and all the rest, Archie’s innocence will be as plain as it always has been to us.”

“Where is he?”

“On an ostrich farm at Natal.”

“Whew!—­we must have him home.  Jenny can’t be spared.  Poor Jenny, when she hears that, it will make all other things light to her.”

“What is their address?”

“No, don’t write.  Mamma has had a fresh cold, and neither my father nor Jenny could leave her.  Let them have a little peace till it gets worse.  There will be plenty of time, if it is to be a twenty-eight days business like the others.  Poor mamma!” and he rolled his head away; then, after some minutes of tossing and shivering, he asked for a prayer out of the little book in his pocket.  “I should know it, but my memory is muddled, I think.”

The book—­a manual for sick-rooms—­was one which Julius had given him new five weeks back.  It showed wear already, having been used as often in that time as in six ordinary years of parish work.  By the time the hard-pressed doctor came, it was plain that the fever was setting in severely, aggravated no doubt by the dreadful night at the ‘Three Pigeons,’ and the unrelaxed exertions ever since; for he was made to allow that he had come home in the chill morning air, cold, sickened, and exhausted; had not chosen to disturb anybody, and had found no refreshment but a raw apple—­the last drop of wine having been bestowed on the sick; had lain down for a short sleep worse than waking, and had neither eaten nor slept since, but worked on by sheer strength of will and muscle.  When Julius thought of the cherishing care that he had received himself, he shuddered, with a sort of self-reproach for his neglect; and the doctor, though good-humouredly telling Herbert not to think he knew anything about his own symptoms, did not conceal from Julius that enough harm had been done in these few days to give the fine Bowater constitution a hard struggle.