from his back, and that his face was resting on the cool damp
stones.

Then all was darkness, mental as well as visual, and he sank into a
stupor, which lasted he could not tell how long.

The awaking was strange.

Scarlett opened his eyes involuntarily, and looked above him and to
right and left. He closed his eyes, and the effect was the same. Then
he lay for a time thinking that he must be asleep, and that this was
some portion of a dream.

But the sensation of faintness, his aching head, and the sore stiffness
of every muscle--so painful that he could hardly move--soon warned him
that he was awake, and he set himself to battle with his confused brain,
to try and make out where he was, and what it all meant. For, as far as
the past was concerned, it was as if a dense black curtain were drawn
across his mind, and this great veil he could not thrust aside.

He was cold--he was stiff and sore--he was hungry and feverishly
thirsty,--he could realise all these things, but that was all, and he
lay thinking and asking himself again and again, "What does it all
mean?"

The first hint which his brain seemed to seize upon was given by a low
deep sigh which came from close at hand.

Scarlett started up, staring wildly in the direction from which the
sound came, while his hands and brow grew moist with terror--a terror
which passed away, as a flash of mental light illumined his obscured
brain, and he cried aloud--

"Father!"

There was no reply, and Scarlett's horror and dread grew more intense,
not from weak foolish imagination, but from the feeling that his father
was lying wounded there, perhaps at the point of death, while he, who
ought to have been aiding him in every way, must have been selfishly
asleep.

The self-shame was not deserved, for nature had been too strong for
Scarlett Markham, and it was more the stupor of utter exhaustion to
which he had succumbed than sleep.

He crept to where Sir Godfrey lay, and felt for his face, which was cold
and clammy, sending a shudder through the fingers which touched the icy
brow, and then sought for the region of the heart.

Incongruous ideas of a trivial nature occur to people even in the most
terrible times, and it was so here, for as Scarlett's hand sought for
his father's breast, he found himself thinking of how good a thing it
was that he removed the armour when he took him upon his back.

The heart was beating faintly, but the pulsations could be plainly