The doctor nodded, but he made no audible reply.  He had bent closer to the man’s chest and was at the moment listening intently to the labored breathing, which seemed to have increased.

Harry edged nearer to the patient, his eyes seeking for some move of life.  All his anger had faded.  Willits, his face ablaze with drink and rage, his eyes flashing, his strident voice ringing out—­even Kate’s shocked, dazed face, no longer filled his mind.  It was the suffering man—­trembling on the verge of eternity, shot to death by his own ball—­that appealed to him.  And then the suddenness of it all—­less than an hour had passed since this tall, robust young fellow stood before him on the stairs, hanging upon every word that fell from Kate’s lips—­and here he lay weltering in his own blood.

Suddenly his father’s hopeful word to the doctor sounded in his ears.  Suppose, after all, Willits should get well!  Then Kate would understand and forgive him!  As this thought developed in his mind his spirits rose.  He scanned the sufferer the more intently, straining his neck, persuading himself that a slight twitching had crossed the dying man’s face.  Almost instantaneously the doctor rose to his feet.

“Quick, Harry!—­hand me that brandy!  It’s just as I hoped—­the ball has ploughed outside the skull—­the brain is untouched.  It was the shock that stunned him.  Leave the room everybody—­you too, colonel—­he’ll come to in a minute and must not be excited.”

Harry sprang from his chair, a great surge of thankfulness rising in his heart, caught up the decanter, filled a glass and pressed it to the sufferer’s lips.  The colonel sat silent and unmoved.  He had seen too many wounded men revive and then die to be unduly excited.  That Willets still breathed was the only feature of his case that gave him any hope.

Harry shot an inquiring glance at his father, and receiving only a cold stare in return, hurried from the room, his steps growing lighter as he ran.  Kate must hear the good news and with the least possible delay.  He would not send a message—­he would go himself; then he could explain and relieve her mind.  She would listen to his pleading.  It was natural she should have been shocked.  He himself had been moved to sympathy by the sufferer’s condition—­how much more dreadful, then, must have been the sight of the wounded man lying there among the flower-pots to a woman nurtured so carefully and one so sensitive in spirit!  But it was all over—­Willits would live—­there would be a reconciliation—­everything would be forgiven and everything forgotten.

All these thoughts crowded close in his mind as he rushed up the stairs two steps at a time to where his sweetheart lay moaning out her heart.  He tapped lightly and her old black mammy opened the door on a crack.

“It’s Marse Harry, mistis,” she called back over her shoulder—­“shall I let him come in?”

“No!—­no!—­I don’t want to see him; I don’t want to see anybody—­my heart is broken!” came the reply in half-stifled sobs.