“Help me to lift him,” he said to Stephen; “and, Roger, kindle thou a fire upon the hearth.  There may be life in him yet.  We will try what we know.  Yes, methinks his heart beats faintly; and the tokens of the distemper are plainly out upon him.  Perchance he may yet live.  Of late I have seen men rise up from their beds whom we have given up for lost.”

Raymond was beginning to realize that the black boils, so often looked upon as the death tokens, were by no means in reality anything of the kind.  As a matter of fact, of the cases that recovered, most, if not all, had the plague spots upon them.  These boils were, in fact, nature’s own effort at expelling the virulent poison from the system, and if properly treated by mild methods and poultices, in some cases really brought relief, so that the patient eventually recovered.

But the intensity of the poison, and its rapid action upon the human organs, made cases of recovery rare indeed at the outset, when the outbreak always came in its most virulent form; and truly the appearance of old Peter Sanghurst was such as almost to preclude hope of restoration.  Tough as he was in constitution, the glaze of death seemed already in his eyes.  He was all but pulseless and as cold as death, whilst the spasmodic twitchings of his limbs when he was lifted spoke of death rather than life.

Still Raymond would not give up hope.  He had the fire kindled, and it soon blazed up hot and fierce, whilst the old man was wrapped in a rich furred cloak which Roger produced from a cupboard, and some hot cordial forced between his lips.  After one or two spasmodic efforts which might have been purely muscular, he appeared to make an attempt to swallow, and in a few more minutes it became plain that he was really doing so, and with increasing ease each time.  The blood began to run through his veins again, the chest heaved, and the breath was drawn in long, labouring gasps.  At last the old man’s eyes opened, and fixed themselves upon Raymond’s face with a long, bewildered stare.

They asked him no questions.  They had no desire that he should speak.  His state was critical in the extreme.  They had but come to minister to his stricken body.  To cope with a mind such as his was a task that Raymond felt must be far beyond his own powers.  He would have given much to have had Father Paul at this bedside for one brief hour, the more so as he saw the shrinking and terror creeping over the drawn, ashen face.  Did his guilty soul know itself to be standing on the verge of eternity? and did the wretched man feel the horror of great darkness infolding him already?

All at once he spoke, and his words were like a cry of terror.

“Alicia!  Alicia! how comest thou here?”