me, get up, Edala dear.
We must put him to bed, you know."

The tone was decisive, practical, but the speaker felt far from as
confident as he would have his sister believe. And Dr Vine's diagnosis
was by no means reassuring. He feared complications. So the wounded
man was carried into the airiest and most comfortable room in Elvesdon's
far from luxurious house, where all was done for him that could be done.

There was difficulty with Edala. She refused to leave the bedside day
or night. It was only when her father recovered full consciousness that
they were able to get her away, when she had poured out her soul to him
in an agony of remorse and self-reproach. Then he had soothed her, and
insisted upon her taking rest and food; and she had obeyed
unquestioningly. His lightest word was law now--as it had been in the
times long past. She was allowed to help her brother and Elvesdon in
their unremitting care of the wounded man, and the same held good of
Evelyn Carden. But it was once and for all decided that neither of the
girls should be allowed to overdo it, and this was adhered to no matter
how much they begged and pleaded.

Elvesdon had taken up the reins of office again, and found his hands
very full indeed. The telegraph wire had been repaired, and messages
kept flashing in, communicating matters which demanded his constant
attention, some necessary and some not. But at night he never curtailed
one single half hour of his vigil at the bedside of his friend in
recently and narrowly escaped peril. They had gone through a furnace
together.

Strong man as he was the strain was beginning to tell upon Elvesdon. He
looked pale and fagged, and his spirits became depressed. His
conversation with Thornhill in the hour of their mutual danger was fresh
in his mind, but although he saw a great deal of Edala there was nothing
in the girl's look or manner to show that she regarded him in the light
of any other than an ordinary friend, a jolly good chum with no nonsense
about him, and whom she could treat with the same free, frank
_camaraderie_ as her own brother. This, of course, was no time to urge
any further claim upon her: he recognised that. Still he felt
depressed.

While feeling a little more so than usual there came a knock at his
office door. It was late afternoon and he was wondering whether he
could venture to shut up for a time before any more of those beastly
wires came in.

"Miss Thornhill wou