must avoid
any strain upon it. We must sit quiet."

Mary was listening attentively, and nodded her agreement to this
pronouncement.

"We must,"--proceeded Mr. Bunce, laboriously--"sit quiet. We may get up
every day now,--a little earlier each time, remaining up a little later
each time,--but we must sit quiet."

Again Mary nodded gravely. Helmsley looked quickly from one to the
other. A close observer might have seen the glimmer of a smile through
his fuzzy grey-white beard,--for his thoughts were very busy. He saw in
Bunce another subject whose disinterested honesty might be worth
dissecting.

"But, doctor----" he began.

Mr. Bunce raised a hand.

"I'm not 'doctor,' my man!" he said--"have no degree--no
qualification--no diploma--no anything whatever but just a little, a
very little common sense,--yes! And I am simply Bunce,"--and here a
smile spread out all the furrows in his face and lit up his eyes; "Or,
as the small boys call me, Dunce!"

"That's all very well, but you're a doctor to me," said Helmsley--"And
you've been as much as any other doctor could possibly be, I'm sure. But
you tell me I must sit quiet--I don't see how I can do that. I was on
the tramp till I broke down,--and I must go on the tramp again,--I
can't be a burden on--on----"

He broke off, unable to find words to express himself. But his inward
eagerness to test the character and attributes of the two human beings
who had for the present constituted themselves as his guardians, made
him tremble violently. And Mr. Bunce looked at him with the scrutinising
air of a connoisseur in the ailments of all and sundry.

"We are nervous,"--he pronounced--"We are highly nervous. And we are
therefore not sure of ourselves. We must be entirely sure of ourselves,
unless we again wish to lose ourselves. Now we presume that when 'on the
tramp' as we put it, we were looking for a friend. Is that not so?"

Helmsley nodded.

"We were trying to find the house of the late Mr. James Deane?"

Mary uttered a little sound that was half a sob and half a sigh.
Helmsley glanced at her with a reassuring smile, and then replied
steadily,--

"That was so!"

"Our friend, Mr. Deane, unfortunately died some five years
since,"--proceeded Mr. Bunce,--"And we found his daughter, or rather,
his daughter found us, instead. This we may put down to an act of
Providence. Now the only thing we can do under the present circumstances
is to remain with our late old friend'