at and
picked himself up with a guilty jerk, as does a horse who stumbles
from carelessness, "at least, it would cover the charges, and--and the
mortgages of course--but not much more--"

Dr. Mangan looked straight in front of him, as became a mortgagee of
delicate feeling, and said with some elaborateness, "No man need be
anxious about money whose security is Irish land, nowadays. 'Tis daily
appressiating in value."

"To every man except the owner!"

Dick struck hard with his ash-plant at a tall weed as he spoke, and
decapitated it with the grace and dexterity of the old cavalryman. He
put force enough into the cut to have felled a tougher foe.

"This place is turned into a wilderness--" he went on and then,
staggering, caught at the Doctor's thick arm.

In an instant the Big Doctor had his other arm round Dick's shoulders,
and held him firm.

"Stand still, Major, it's nothing! You'll be all right in a minute!"
he said, meeting Dick's frightened eyes with reassuring steadiness.
"The sun's very hot. It's only a touch of giddiness--"

He stood, a great rock of support, uttering leisurely words of
consolation, while he quietly slipped one hand down the Major's arm,
until his broad, perceptive finger-tips could feel the faint pulse
jerking under their pressure.

Dick's colour crept back, and the veins, that had shown blue on the
sudden yellow of his cheek, began to lose their vividness.

"That's more like it!" said the Doctor, tranquilly. "Do you sit quite
here for a minute, now, and I'll go get you a drop of something from
our friend, Mr. Evans, that'll do you no harm!"

He established his patient on a garden seat, and left him, moving
slowly until he knew he was no longer in sight; then he swung into the
house, with swift strides that would have compelled a smaller man to
run, if he were to keep level with him.

"Poor old lad!" he thought, compassionately; yet, blended with the
compassion, was the half-unconscious triumph of strong middle-age at
sight of the failure of a senior. "That's the first knock. He'll want
to mind himself from this out--the next one might hit him harder."

CHAPTER XXIII

The back stairs at Mount Music were old and precipitous. To descend
them at high noon demanded circumspection at night, when the armies of
the cockroaches were abroad; and marauding rats came flopping up and
down them, upon their unlawful occasions, only that man of iron,
Robert Evans, was proof to their