‘Shut that door!’ uncle shouted from the parlour.  ’Let the dog in, whatever he is, and let him tell his tale this side the oak.’

So I let him in and shut the door after him, and I had better have shut to the lid of my own coffin after me.

Him that I let in was dripping wet, and all spent with fighting the wind on these Downs, where it is like a lion roaring for its prey, and will go nigh to kill you, if you fight it long enough.  He leaned against the wall and said—­

’I have lost my way, and I have had a nasty fall.  I think there is something wrong with my arm—­hollow—­slip—­light—­hospitality beg your pardon, I’m sure,’ and with that he fainted dead off on the cocoanut matting at my feet.

Uncle came out when I screamed, and we got the stranger in and put him on the big couch by the fire.  Uncle was nursing up with one of his bad attacks of bronchitis, the same thing that carried him off in the end, and the first thing he said when he’d felt the poor chap’s arm down was—­

’This is a bad break.  Which of you girls will go and wake one of the waggoners to fetch Doctor from Felscombe?’

‘I will,’ I said.

But before I went I got out the port wine and the brandy, and bade Lilian rub his hands a bit, and be sure she didn’t let him see her looking frightened when he come to.

Why did I do that?  Because the Lord made me to be a fool—­giving him her pretty face to be the first thing he looked at when he come to after that long, dreary spell on the Downs, and that black journey into the strange place where people go to when they faint.

But everything that there was of me ached to be of some use to him.  So I went, and once outside the door it seemed easier to take Brown Bess and go myself to Felscombe than to rouse the waggoners, who were but sleepy and slow-headed at the best of times.  So I saddled Brown Bess myself and started.

It was but a small way across the Downs that I had to lead her, it being almost as much as both of us could do to keep our feet in the fury of the wind.  Then you go down the steep hill into the village, and as soon as we had passed the brow, it was easy and I mounted.  I was down there in less time than it would have taken to rouse one of those heavy-headed carters; and Doctor, he come back with me, walking beside Brown Bess with his hand on her bridle, he not being by any means loth to come out such a night, because, forsooth, it was me that fetched him.  Oh yes!  I might have married him if I had wanted to, and more than one better man than him; but that’s neither here nor there.

When we got in, we found Lilian kneeling by the sofa rubbing the young man’s hands as I had told her to, and his eyes were open, and there was a bit of colour in his cheek, and he was looking at her like as any one but a fool might have known he would look; and the Doctor, he saw it too, and looked at me and grinned; and if I had been God, that grin should have been his last.  No, I don’t mean to be irreverent, but it’s true, all the same.