"Oh! Duke, Duke, where is he?"
As if he understood her human speech—as, indeed, he did, Duke turned to precede her upstairs.
On a bench in the long corridor two maid servants were seated, crying bitterly. But Joyce did not speak to them, she dared not; even the question she had asked Duke died on her lips.
The door of her father's room was ajar; and as Duke pushed it open with his nose, Joyce could see the great four-post bed, her mother sitting by it, and curled up in the window-seat was Piers.
The friends who had been there in the early part of the day were gone; they could do no more at Fair Acres. And Mr. Paget's aim was to set the constables to work to find the man who must have hurled a sharp stone at Mr. Falconer's head. The Wells doctor, too, was gone. He had a pressing case near Wells upon his hands, but he was to return at eight o'clock, when, it was hoped the doctor greater than himself, who had been summoned from Bristol, would have arrived.
In those days help in emergency was slow to obtain. Telegrams were not dreamed of, and horsepower performed the part which steam was soon to take up; to be followed by the marvellous electric force, which now sends on the wings of the wind messages all over the world, multiplied, on the very day on which I write, to an enormous extent, by the introduction of sixpenny telegrams, which will send a call for help, or strike a note of joy, and win an immediate response from thousands.
But there were no electric messages possible to get medical help for the squire, nor, indeed, would any help avail.
With a great sigh, Duke resumed his watch at the foot of the high bed; and Joyce, crossing over, kissed her mother and Piers, and then gazed down upon her father.
"Dear dad!" she said, inadvertently using the familiar name.
"He has not spoken nor opened his eyes since we laid him here," Mrs. Falconer said. "He knows no one—no one——"