clearer speech, which he seemed to have achieved in part,
was the paralysis-stricken man. The left hand, powerless no longer, was
still uncertain of its purpose, and wavered in its ill-directed motion;
the right, needed to raise him from his pillow, grasped the level
moulding of the couch-back. Its fingers still showed a better colour
than those of its fellow, which trembled and closed and reopened, as
though to make trial of their new-found power. His eyes were fixed on
this hand rather than on his daughter or the stranger. His knees jerked
against the light bondage of a close dressing-gown, and his right foot
was striving to lift or help the other down to the floor. Probably life
was slower to return to it than to the hand, as the blood returns
soonest to the finger-tips after frost. Only the face was quite
changed from its seeming of but ten minutes back. The voice choked
and stammered still, but speech came in the end, breaking out with a
shout-burst:--"Stop--stop--stop!"

"Easy so--easy so!" says the police-officer, as the woman gives way to a
fit of hysterical crying, more the breaking-point of nerve-tension than
either joy or pain. "Easy so, master!--easy does it. Don't you be
frightened. Plenty of time and to spare!"

The old man gets his foot to the floor, and his daughter, under no
impulse of reason--mere nerve-paroxysm--runs to his side crying
out:--"No, dear father! No, dear father! Lie down--lie down!" She is
trying to force him back to his pillow, while he chokes out something he
finds it harder to say than "Stop--stop!" which still comes at
intervals.

"I should make it easy for him, Miss Hawkins, if I was in your place.
Let the old gentleman please himself." Thus the officer, whose
sedateness of manner acts beneficially. She accepts the suggestion,
standing back from her father with a stupid, bewildered gaze, between
him and the exit to the roof. "Give him time," says Sub-Inspector
Cardwell.

He takes the time, and his speech dies down. But he can move that hand
better now--may make its action serve for speech. Slowly he raises it
and points--points straight at his daughter. He wants her help--is that
it? She thinks so, but when she acts on the impulse he repels her,
feebly shouting out: "No--no--no!"

"Come out from between him and the clock, missis," says the officer,
thinking he has caught a word right, and that a clock near the door is
what the old man points at. "He thinks it's six o'clock."