“Don’t let that man go,” said the Squire to Toner.

“Ain’t that what I come all this way fer?” answered the lover of Serlizer.

The Squire and the veteran, with terrible mental upbraidings, raised the body from its bed of leaves and wood-mould and placed it reverently upon the sheet, which it stained with blood at once.  Then, while the colonel held one lantern and Wilkinson the other, Mr. Douglas and Timotheus took the other corners of the simple ambulance, and bore their burden to the house.  In his own room they laid Rawdon’s victim, removed the clothing from his wounds, washed away the clotted blood, only to despair over the flow that still continued, and rejoiced in the fact that life was not altogether extinct, when they handed him over to the care of the three matrons.  While the colonel was sending Maguffin in search of the doctor, the voice of Squire Halbert was heard in the hall, saying he thought it must have been Miss Carmichael who had summoned him, at any rate it was a young lady from Bridesdale.  He stanched the bleeding, administered stimulants, and ordered constant watching.  “The body has suffered terribly,” he said, “and has hardly any hold upon the soul, which may slip away from us at any moment.”  The good doctor professed his willingness to stay until the immediate crisis from loss of blood was overpast.  To all enquiries he answered that he had very little hope, but he sent the kind ladies away from the death-like chamber, and established himself there with Wilkinson, who would not leave his friend.

The light of a beautiful Sunday morning found Miss Du Plessis, Miss Halbert, and Miss Graves in bitter sorrow, and little Marjorie beside herself with grief.  The very kitchen was full of lamentation; but one young woman went about, silent and serious indeed, yet tearless.  This was Miss Carmichael.  The doctor had come down to breakfast, leaving the dominie alone with the patient, when she took a tray from Tryphena, and carried up the morning repast of the watcher.  Then, for the first time, she got a sight of the wounded man, whose eyes the doctor had closed, and whose jaw by gentle pressure he had brought back, till the lips were only half parted.  She could hardly speak, as she laid a timid hand on her late principal’s shoulder, directing his attention to the breakfast tray.  “Look away, please, for Cecile’s sake if not for mine,” she managed to stammer, and, as he turned his head aside, she flung herself upon her knees beside the bed, and took the apparently dead man’s hand in her own, covered it with tears and kisses, and transferred the ring she had once worn back to her own hand, replacing it with one of her own that would hardly slip down over the bloodless emaciated finger.  Quietly she arose, and noiselessly left the room, when the dominie returned to his watching and administration of stimulants.  When she came down stairs, outwardly calm but looking as if she had seen a ghost, everybody,