Josiah came at the call of the bell.  She detained him.  She asked, “How was the Captain wounded?  No one wrote of how it happened.”

“Well, missy, he would ride a horse called Hoodoo—­it was just the bad luck of that brute done it.”  Josiah’s account was graphic and clear enough.  John Penhallow’s character lost nothing as interpreted by Josiah.

“It was a dangerous errand, I suppose.”

“Yes, Miss Leila.  You see, when they know about a man that he somehow don’t mind bullets and will go straight to where he’s sent, they’re very apt to get him killed.  At the first shot he ought to have tumbled off and played possum till it was dark.”

“But then,” said Leila, “he would have been too late with General Parke’s message.”

“Of course, Master John couldn’t sham dead like I would.—­I don’t despise bullets like he does.  Once before he had orders to go somewhere, and couldn’t get across a river.  He was as mad as a wet hen.”

“A wet hen—­delightful!  Did he do it?”

“Guess you don’t know him!  When Master John wants anything, well, he’s a terrible wanter—­always was that way even when he was a boy—­when he wants anything, he gets it.”

“Indeed! does he?  I think he is waiting for you, Josiah.”

The black’s conclusive summary hardened the young woman’s heart.  She sat a while smiling, then took up a book and failed to become interested.

As John became familiar with the altered life of a household once happy and in pleasant relation to the outer world, he felt as Leila had done the depressing influence of a home in which the caprices of an invalid life were constantly to be considered.  Meanwhile his own spare figure gained flesh, and on one sunny morning—­he long remembered it—­he was rather suddenly free from pain, and with only the stiff elbow was, as McGregor described it, “discharged cured.”

For some time he had been feeling that in bodily vigour and sense of being his normal self he had been rapidly gaining ground.  The relief from the thraldom of pain brought a sudden uplift of spirits and a feeling of having been born anew into an inheritance of renewed strength and of senses sharpened beyond what he had ever known.  A certain activity of happiness like a bodily springtime comes with such a convalescence.  Ceasing to feel the despotism of self-attention, he began to recover his natural good sense and to watch with more care his uncle’s state, his aunt’s want of consideration for any one but James Penhallow, and the effect upon Leila of this abnormal existence.  He began to understand that to surely win this sad girl-heart there must be a patient siege, and above all something done for the master of Grey Pine.  He recognized with love’s impatience the beauty of this young life amid the difficulties of the Colonel’s moods and Ann Penhallow’s ill-concealed jealousy.  A great passion may be a very selfish thing, or in the nobler natures rise so high on the wings of love that it casts like the singing lark no shadow on the earth.  He could wait and respect with patient affection the sense of duty which perhaps—­ah! that perhaps—­made love a thing which must wait—­yes, and wait too with helpful service where she too had nobly served.