im under his care, and so the venture was tried. Myles was carried to
Scotland Yard, and perhaps was none the worse therefore. The Prince, the
Earl of Mackworth, and two or three others stood silently watching as
the worthy shaver and leecher, assisted by his apprentice and Gascoyne,
washed and bathed the great gaping wound in the side, and bound it with
linen bandages. Myles lay with closed eyelids, still, pallid, weak as
a little child. Presently he opened his eyes and turned them, dull and
languid, to the Prince.

"What hath happed my father, my Lord?" said he, in a faint, whispering
voice.

"Thou hath saved his life and honor, Myles," the Prince answered. "He
is here now, and thy mother hath been sent for, and cometh anon with the
priest who was with them this morn."

Myles dropped his eyelids again; his lips moved, but he made no sound,
and then two bright tears trickled across his white cheek.

"He maketh a woman of me," the Prince muttered through his teeth, and
then, swinging on his heel, he stood for a long time looking out of the
window into the garden beneath.

"May I see my father?" said Myles, presently, without opening his eyes.

The Prince turned around and looked inquiringly at the surgeon.

The good man shook his head. "Not to-day," said he; "haply to-morrow he
may see him and his mother. The bleeding is but new stanched, and such
matters as seeing his father and mother may make the heart to swell, and
so maybe the wound burst afresh and he die. An he would hope to live, he
must rest quiet until to-morrow day."

But though Myles's wound was not mortal, it was very serious. The fever
which followed lingered longer than common--perhaps because of the hot
weather--and the days stretched to weeks, and the weeks to months, and
still he lay there, nursed by his mother and Gascoyne and Prior Edward,
and now and again by Sir James Lee.

One day, a little before the good priest returned to Saint Mary's
Priory, as he sat by Myles's bedside, his hands folded, and his sight
turned inward, the young man suddenly said, "Tell me, holy father, is it
always wrong for man to slay man?"

The good priest sat silent for so long a time that Myles began to think
he had not heard the question. But by-and-by he answered, almost with a
sigh, "It is a hard question, my son, but I must in truth say, meseems
it is not always wrong."

"Sir," said Myles, "I have been in battle when men were slain, but never
did I think t