right, Teackle?"

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