che; then said aloud:

"Never you mind, Dixon; I shall take the responsibility. You let me
alone. Now, my boys, lend a hand with the hurdle, and give me some
coats."

Faversham's leg had been already placed in a rough splint and his head
bandaged. They lifted him, quite unconscious, upon the hurdle, and made
him as comfortable as they could. The doctor anxiously felt his pulse,
and directed the men to carry him, as carefully as possible, through a
narrow gate in the high wall opposite which was standing open, across the
private foot-bridge over the stream, and so to the Terrace whereon stood
Threlfall Tower. Impenetrably hidden as it was behind the wall and the
trees, the old house was yet, in truth, barely sixty yards away. Dixon
followed, lamenting and protesting, but in vain.

"Hold your tongue, man!" said Undershaw at last, losing his temper. "You
disgrace your master. It would be a public scandal to refuse to help a
man in this plight! If we get him alive through to-night, it will be a
mercy. I believe the cart's been over him somewhere!" he added, with a
frowning brow.

Dixon silenced, but by no means persuaded, followed the little
procession, till it reached a side door of the Tower, opening on the
terrace just beyond the bridge. The door was shut, and it was not till
the doctor had made several thunderous attacks upon it, beside sending
men round to the other doors of the house, that Mrs. Dixon at last
cautiously opened it.

Fresh remonstrance and refusal followed on the part both of husband and
wife. Fresh determination also on the part of the doctor, seconded by the
threatening looks and words of Faversham's bearers, stout Cumbria
labourers, to whom the storming of the Tower was clearly a business
they enjoyed. At last the old couple, bitterly protesting, gave way, and
the procession entered.

They found themselves in a long corridor, littered with a strange
multitude of objects, scarcely distinguishable in the dim light shed by
one unshuttered window through which some of the evening glow still
penetrated. Dixon and his wife whispered excitedly together; after which
Dixon led the way through the corridor into the entrance hall--which was
equally encumbered--and so to a door on the right.

"Yo' can bring him in there," he said sulkily to Undershaw. "There's
mebbe a bed upstairs we can bring doon."

He threw open the drawing-room--a dreary, disused room, with its carpets
rolled up in one corner, and i