Mrs. Goddard entered the room quickly.  On seeing her husband, she uttered a low cry and laid her hand upon Mr. Juxon’s arm.  For some seconds she stood thus, quite motionless, gazing with intense and sympathetic interest at the sick man’s face.  Then she went to his side and laid her hand upon his burning forehead and looked into his eyes.

“Walter!  Walter!” she cried.  “Don’t you know me?  Oh, why does he groan like that?  Is he suffering?” she asked turning to Mr. Juxon.

“No—­I do not think he suffers much.  He is quite unconscious.  He is talking all the time but cannot pronounce the words.”

The squire stood at a distance looking on, noting the womanly thoughtfulness Mrs. Goddard displayed as she smoothed her husband’s pillow and tried to settle his head more comfortably upon the bags of ice; and all the while she never took her eyes from Goddard’s face, as though she were fascinated by her own sorrow and his suffering.  She moved about the bed with that instinctive understanding of sickness which belongs to delicate women, but her glance never strayed to Mr. Juxon; she seemed forced by a mysterious magnetism to look at Walter and only at him.

“Has he been long like this?” she asked.

“Ever since last night.  He called you once—­he said, ’Mary Goddard, let me in!’ And then he said something else—­he said—­I cannot remember what he said.”  Mr. Juxon checked himself, remembering the words John had heard, and of which he only half understood the import.  But Mrs. Goddard hardly noticed his reply.

“Will you leave me alone with him?” she said presently.  “There is a bell in the room—­I could ring if anything—­happened,” she added with mournful hesitation.

“Certainly,” answered the squire.  “Only, I beg of you my dear friend—­do not distress yourself needlessly—­”

“Needlessly!” she repeated with a sorrowful smile.  “It is all I can do for him—­to watch by his side.  He will not live—­he will not live, I am sure.”

The squire inwardly prayed that she might be right, and left her alone with the sick man.  Who, he thought, was better fitted, who had a stronger right to be at his bedside at such a time?  If only he might die!  For if he lived, how much more terrible would the separation be, when Booley the detective came to conduct him back to his prison!  In truth, it would be more terrible even than Mr. Juxon imagined.

Meanwhile he must go and see to the rest of the household.  He must speak to John Short; he must see Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose, and he must take precautions against any of them seeing Mr. Booley.  This was, he thought, very important, and he resolved to speak with the latter first.  John was probably asleep, worn out with the watching of the night.

Mr. Booley sat in the squire’s study where he had been left almost an hour earlier.  He had installed himself in a comfortable corner by the fire and was reading the morning paper which he had found unopened upon the table.  He seemed thoroughly at home as he sat there, a pair of glasses upon his nose and his feet stretched out towards the flame upon the hearth.