His face was bedabbled with blood.  A wound, a frightful wound, was visible on the side of his bare head, high above the ear.  He looked at her, his eyes recognized her, before he fainted again in her arms.  His hands and his clothes were covered with earth stains.  He must have traversed some distance; in that dreadful condition he must have faltered and fallen more than once before he reached the house.  His sister wiped the blood from his face.  His daughter called on him frantically to forgive her before he died—­the harmless, gentle, kind-hearted father, who had never said a hard word to her!  The father whom she had deceived!

The terrified servants hurried into the room.  Their appearance roused their master from the extraordinary stupor that had seized him.  He was at the window before the footman could get there.  The two lifted Sir Joseph into the room, and laid him on the sofa.  Natalie knelt by him, supporting his head.  Miss Lavinia stanched the flowing blood with her handkerchief.  The women-servants brought linen and cold water.  The man hurried away for the doctor, who lived on the other side of the village.  Left alone again with Turlington, Natalie noticed that his eyes were fixed in immovable scrutiny on her father’s head.  He never said a word.  He looked, looked, looked at the wound.

The doctor arrived.  Before either the daughter or the sister of the injured man could put the question, Turlington put it—­“Will he live or die?”

The doctor’s careful finger probed the wound.

“Make your minds easy.  A little lower down, or in front, the blow might have been serious.  As it is, there is no harm done.  Keep him quiet, and he will be all right again in two or three days.”

Hearing those welcome words, Natalie and her aunt sank on their knees in silent gratitude.  After dressing the wound, the doctor looked round for the master of the house.  Turlington, who had been so breathlessly eager but a few minutes since, seemed to have lost all interest in the case now.  He stood apart, at the window, looking out toward the church-yard, thinking.  The questions which it was the doctor’s duty to ask were answered by the ladies.  The servants assisted in examining the injured man’s clothes:  they discovered that his watch and purse were both missing.  When it became necessary to carry him upstairs, it was the footman who assisted the doctor.  The foot man’s master, without a word of explanation, walked out bare headed into the back garden, on the search, as the doctor and the servants supposed, for some trace of the robber who had attempted Sir Joseph’s life.

His absence was hardly noticed at the time.  The difficulty of conveying the wounded man to his room absorbed the attention of all the persons present.