got Norton's inert form upon the folded blankets.
Patten's hands shook a little; he asked for a sip of brandy from her
flask. She granted it, and while Patten drank she cut away the hair
from the unconscious man's scalp. Long ago her fingers had made their
examination, were assured that her diagnosis was correct. Her hands
were as untrembling as the steel of her knife. She made the first
incision, drawing back the flap of skin and flesh, revealing the bone
of the skull. . . .

For forty-five minutes she worked, her hands swift, sure, capable,
unerring. It was done. She was right. The under-table of the skull
had been fractured; there was the bone pressure upon the underlying
area of brain-tissue. She had removed the pressure and with it any
true pathological cause of the theft impulse.

She drew a bandage about the sleeping eyes. She made Patten bring his
own saddle-blanket; it was fixed across the entrance of the anteroom of
the King's Palace, darkening it. Then she went to the ledge just
outside and stood there, staring with wide eyes across the little
meadow with its flowers and birds and water, down the slope of the
mountain, to the miles of desert. She had now but to await the
awakening.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

When Norton stirred and would have opened his eyes but for the bandage
drawn over them, she was at his side. She had been kneeling there for
a long time, waiting. Her hand was on his where it had crept softly
from his wrist.

"You must lie very still," she commanded gently. "I am with you and
everything is all right. There was . . . an accident. No, don't try
to move the cloth; please, Roderick." She pushed his hand back down to
his side. "We are in the King's Palace, just you and I, and everything
is all right."

He was feverish, and she soothed him; sick, and she mothered him and
nursed him; troubled, uncertain, perplexed, and she comforted him. At
the first she went no further than saying that there had been an
accident; that already she had sent to San Juan for all that was needed
to make him comfortable; that Mr. Engle had been instructed to speed a
man to the railroad for further necessities; that now for his own sake,
for her sake, he must just lie very still . . . try not even to think.

He was listless, seeming without volition, quite willing to surrender
himself into her keeping. What dazed thoughts were his upon this first
awakening were lost,