In this romantic attitude was she surprised, first by the coachman of the landau and pair as he swung round the bend of the drive, and then by the Archdeacon, who leaned over the door of the carriage.  Miss Winwood sprang to her feet; the coachman pulled up, and the Archdeacon alighted.

“My dear Uncle Edward”—­she wrung his hand—­“I’m so glad to see you.  Do help me grapple with an extraordinary situation.”

The Archdeacon smiled humorously.  He was a spare man of seventy, with thin, pointed, clean-shaven face, and clear blue eyes like Miss Winwood’s.  “If there’s a situation, my dear Ursula, with which you can’t grapple,” said he, “it must indeed be extraordinary.”

She narrated what had occurred, and together they bent over the unconscious youth.  “I would suggest,” said she, “that we put him into the carriage, drive him up to the house, and send for Dr. Fuller.”

“I can only support your suggestion,” said the Archdeacon.

So the coachman came down from his box and helped them to lift the young man into the landau; and his body swayed helplessly between Miss Winwood and the Archdeacon, whose breeches and gaiters were smeared with dust from his heavy boots.  A few moments afterwards he was carried into the library and laid upon a sofa, and Miss Winwood administered restoratives.  The deep stupor seemed to pass, and he began to moan.

Miss Winwood and the housekeeper stood by his side.  The Archdeacon, his hands behind his back, paced the noiseless Turkey carpet.  “I hope,” said he, “your doctor will not be long in coming.”

“It looks like a sunstroke,” the housekeeper remarked, as her mistress scrutinized the clinical thermometer.

“It doesn’t,” said Miss Winwood bluntly.  “In sunstroke the face is either congested or clammy.  I know that much.  He has a temperature of 103.”

“Poor fellow!” said the Archdeacon.

“I wonder who he is,” said Miss Winwood.

“Perhaps this may tell us,” said the Archdeacon.

From the knapsack, carelessly handled by the servant who had brought it in, had escaped a book, and the servant had laid the book on the top of the knapsack.  The Archdeacon took it up.

“Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici and Urn Burial.  On the flyleaf, ‘Paul Savelli.’  An undergraduate, I should say, on a walking tour.”

Miss Winwood took the book from his hands—­a little cheap reprint.  “I’m glad,” she said.

“Why, my dear Ursula?”

“I’m very fond of Sir Thomas Browne, myself,” she replied.

Presently the doctor came and made his examination.  He shook a grave head.  “Pneumonia.  And he has got it bad.  Perhaps a touch of the sun as well.”  The housekeeper smiled discreetly.  “Looks half-starved, too.  I’ll send up the ambulance at once and get him to the cottage hospital.”

Miss Winwood, a practical woman, was aware that the doctor gave wise counsel.  But she looked at Paul and hesitated.  Paul’s destiny, though none knew it, hung in the balance.  “I disapprove altogether of the cottage hospital,” she said.