"I see."
"The General's main bad, I'm told. The doctor's just come and gone. He—you know him: Dr. Dillwyn—is sleeping here to-night, it seems, if you can call it sleeping when he only gets two hours."
"How two hours?"
"Well, I don't know, sir. But that's how it is. I head the servants talking. And mighty poor rest it seems to me for a man that's toiling all day. I suppose he'll be up with the old gent the rest of the night. He wouldn't have another thing done to that window, either"—pointing to the window against which the ladder lay—"although he is sleeping in that room, and the lower sash is out, as you can see. Seems he always sleeps with the window open."
Darkham nodded to him as a dismissal, and he moved away. Just as he was turning the corner, however, Darkham called to him.
"You are leaving your ladder?"
"Yes, sir. Hope to be back shortly, and the ladder'll do no harm."
"No, of course not, unless the doctor objects—he's sleeping in that room, you say."
"Why, bless you! the ladder can't harm him."
"True. Especially when he has only got two hours to endure it." Darkham laughed pleasantly. "I hope they will be early ones, at all events."