Finding his wound appeared very tolerably dressed, Mrs. Rees would not disturb the bandages.  She gave him a cooling draught, and watched by him till he fell asleep.  Then she tidied her house, dressed herself, and got everything in order for nursing him.  She would have sent at once to Redware to let his father know where and in what condition he was, but not a single person came near the cottage the whole day, and she dared not leave him before the fever had subsided.  He raved a good deal, generally in the delusion that he was talking to Dorothy—­who sought to kill him, and to whom he kept giving directions, at one time how to guide the knife to reach his heart, at another how to mingle her poison so that it should act with speed and certainty.

At length one fine evening in early autumn, when the red sun shone level through the window of the little room where he lay, and made a red glory on the wall, he came to himself a little.

‘Is it blood?’ he murmured.  ’Did Dorothy do it?—­How foolish I am!  It is but a blot the sun has left behind him!—­Ah!  I see!  I am dead and lying on the top of my tomb.  I am only marble.  This is Redware church.  Oh, mother Rees, is it you!  I am very glad!  Cover me over a little.  The pall there.’

His eyes closed, and for a few hours he lay in a deep sleep, from which he awoke very weak, but clear-headed.  He remembered nothing, however, since leaving the quarry, except what appeared a confused dream of wandering through an interminable night of darkness, weariness, and pain.  His first words were,—­

’I must get up, mother Rees:  my father will be anxious about me.  Besides, I promised to set out for Gloucester to-day.’

She sought to quiet him, but in vain, and was at last compelled to inform him that his father, finding he did not return, had armed himself, mounted Oliver, and himself led his little company to join the earl of Essex—­who was now on his way, at the head of an army consisting chiefly of the trained bands of London, to raise the siege of Gloucester.

Richard started up, and would have leaped from the bed, but fell back helpless and unconscious.  When at length his nurse had succeeded in restoring him, she had much ado to convince him that the best thing in all respects was to lie still and submit to be nursed—­so to get well as soon as possible, and join his father.

‘Alas, mother, I have no horse,’ said Richard, and hid his face on the pillow.

‘The Lord will provide what thee wants, my son,’ said the old woman with emotion, neither asking nor caring whether the Lord was on the side of the king or of the parliament, but as little doubting that he must be on the side of Richard.

He soon began to eat hopefully, and after a day or two she found pretty nearly employment enough in cooking for him.

At last, weak as he still was, he would be restrained no longer.  To Gloucester he must go, and relieve his father.  Expostulation was unavailing:  go he must, he said, or his soul would tear itself out of his body, and go without it.