Here was a curious coil, but I could break one strand of it, at least, and so I did.

“I remember well enough,” I hastened to say.  “But being here, and seeing you there in the great chair, carried me back to that other time, making all the interval stand as a dream.  Have I been ailing?”

“You have been terribly near to death, Monsieur John; so near that Doctor Carew has twice given you over.”

“No,” said I; “there was no fear of that.  I am like that man in the old German folk tale who made a compact with the Evil One, selling thereby his chance to die.  Death would not take me as a gift, Mistress Margery; I have tried him too often.”

“Hush!” she said; “’tis an ill thing to jest about.  Why should you want to die?”

“Rather ask why I should choose to live.  But this is beside the mark.  You should have let me die, dear lady; but since you did not, we must e’en make the best of it.”

She faced me with a smile that struggled with some deeper stirring of the heart; I knew not what.

“’Tis a monstrous doleful alternative, n’est-ce pas?  And I must not let you talk of doleful things; indeed, I must not let you talk at all—­’tis Doctor Carew’s order.”

So saying, she smoothed the counterpane and straightened my pillows; and after giving me a great spoonful of some cordial that first set a pleasant glow alight in me and afterward made me drowsy, she took post again in the hollow of the big chair and was so sitting when I fell asleep.

This day’s awakening was the first of many so nearly of a piece that I lost the count of them; and sleep, deep and dreamless for the better part, stole away the hours till the memory of that inch-by-inch return to health and strength is itself like the memory of the vaguest of dreams.

By times when I awoke it was the bluff Doctor Carew bending over me to dress my wound; at other times it was Margery come to tempt me with a bowl of broth or some other kickshaw from the kitchen.  Now and again I awoke to find Scipio or old Anthony standing watch at my bedside; and once—­but that was after I was up and in my clothes and able to sit and drowse in the great chair—­I opened my eyes to find that my company was the master of the house.

He was sitting as I had seen him sit once before, behind a lighted candle at the little table with a parchment spread out under his bony hands.  He was mumbling over the written words of it when I looked, but at my stirring he gave over and sat back in his chair to cross his thin legs and match his long fingers by the ends, and wink and blink at me as though he had but now discovered that he was not alone.

“I give ye good even, Captain Ireton,” he said, finally, rasping the greeting out at me as it had been a curse.  “I hope ye’ve slept well.”

I said I had, and thanked him, once for the wish, and again for his coming to see me.  I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in my former thoughts of him ’twas something abated now.