A chisel was lying in his path. With the toe of his finely-made boot he dealt it so forcible a kick that the iron went ringing across the pavement and chipped a petal from a rose in the lower border of the Saint's Shipwreck. As he strode towards Jackson he limped a little.
"So your dead monks have fought for you and won," said Isabel bitterly, turning round upon Antonio.
"Sir Percy will try again," he answered.
"My father never tries again," said she, once more turning away her face.
Just then they heard a sickening cry of pain; and the monk saw Sir Percy drop heavily from the top of the short ladder. Jackson caught him as he fell. The luckless baronet had been trying to discover the cause of his failure and had thrust his hand into a pool of burning acid. He sank against Jackson's rock-like shoulder and swooned away.
Antonio instantly took command. His strong voice rang through the chapel like a brazen trumpet.
"Mr. Crowberry," he said, "run to the kitchen. There are bowls on a dresser. Bring us water from the stream at once. Edward, rush up to the house. Bring oil and lint—oil and silk or linen or whatever you can. Mrs. Baxter, you will kindly go and prepare his bed at once."
He did not name Isabel; for she was already bending over her father with such anguish in her blue eyes that Antonio could hardly bear the sight. For a moment he was forced to turn aside.
"Take heart," he said softly in her ear, as soon as he was able to speak. "We shall bring him round. For an hour or two, I fear he will have great pain; but there is an ointment at my farm which will give him ease. Be brave. Cheer up. He must not open his eyes on weeping faces."
While Jackson unfastened the prostrate man's collar and Mr. Crowberry bathed his forehead with cold water from the torrent, Antonio hurried through the doorway and sped up the spiral stairs which led to the roof of the cloister. But, about six feet from the top, he pushed open a somber door and entered a long attic which ran over the ceilings of the monk's cells, parallel with the north wall of the chapel.