“My lord, fly!—Here is plague, here is death!” Then, in yet more piercing lamentation: “What! Master Harry, too! Merciful Heaven!”
“Sir,” said Rockhurst to the physician, “your attention hither!”
“Truly,” said the doctor, “this seems an urgent case.”
He was perhaps not displeased to find, instead of the plague-stricken patient he had been summoned to attend, a clean lad a-bleeding of a sword wound. Old Chitterley ran feebly hither and thither, as father and surgeon bent together over the unconscious form. Robin stared, voiceless.
“It is an old wound, ill-healed,” explained Rockhurst. “My faithful son—he fought, a month agone, one who impugned my good name—now, hearing I was in danger of the sickness, naught could keep him from me. All the way from Yorkshire … and he wasted with the fever of the hurt! When I saw him I chid him.” The father looked with dry eyes of agony at the physician’s thoughtful face.
“The bleeding has somewhat waned,” said the latter, then, without committing himself. Then, rising stiffly from his knees: “I could attend to the young gentleman better,” he pursued, “were he upon a couch. May I assist your lordship—?”
He had recognised the noble Lord Constable, the King’s friend, and was full of solicitude.
“Nay—I need no aid!” The father gathered his boy again into his arms. “Chitterley, unbolt the door—How now!” The old man had flung himself before his master and, with clasped hands, was motioning him desperately back. “The wretch has gone crazy!”
“Nay, my dear master, in God’s name, she lies there!”
“She?”