er?'

'Grave danger.'

'Will he die?'

'Not if I can help it,' And with that the stranger leaped on shore, and
ran like a racehorse across the fields and into the nearest house,
where he turned out the residents in a body, and made them unship a
five-barred gate. There were plenty of cushions in the boat, and he
wasted no time in getting others. The helpers beaten up by the doctor
worked with a will; and one ran off in advance and seized upon a punt
belonging to the Campers Out, and set it at the end of the house-boat,
towards the shore. Over this they bore Leland, and laid him on the
cushions which the doctor had arranged upon the gate. Then they carried
him into the 'Swan' and got him to bed there.

Lilian and her mother, trembling and struggling with their tears,
followed the bearers. The crowd which always accompanies disaster, even
in a village, made its comments as the melancholy little cortege went
along, and Lilian could not fail to overhear. Hodges was there.

'I know'd what it ud come to,' proclaimed Hodges loudly. 'They was a
naggin' every night, like mad, they was. I told you all what it ud come
to.'

'So a did,' said others in the crowd. Then some one asked 'Where's
t'other chap?' and in the murmur Lilian heard her lover's name again and
again repeated.

She knew well enough--she could not fail to know--the meaning of the
murmurs; but she started as though she had been struck when Hodges said
aloud, so that all might hear--

'They was a naggin' again last night, an' then theer was a shot; and
then ten minutes arterwards that Barndale bolts and knocks me over at
the bottom o' the station steps. What's all that pint to?'

'Oh,' said another, 'there can't be no mortal shadder of a doubt who
done it.'

For a moment these cruel words turned her faint; but the swift reaction
of certainty and resolve which followed them nerved her and braced her
for all the troublous times to come. She waited calmly until all had
been done that could be done. Then when the doctor had left his patient,
she took him apart.

'My brother has been wounded by a pistol shot?' she asked him very
bravely and steadily. The doctor nodded. 'I must find out who did it,'
she went on, looking him full in the face with her hazel eyes.

'The people here seem to suspect a Mr. ------'

She snatched the word out of the doctor's mouth.

'My brother's dearest friend, sir. Why, sir, they would have died for
each other.'

'As you wou