"He is conscious," said a voice beside him, and a face, dark, curiously eager, bent over him. It was Morris Pugh's. Walking over the hills that morning on his way to Cæron, the county town, he had come upon Ned Blackborough, had summoned help, and brought him to the infirmary. And now, although having seen him but once in his life, he had failed to recognise the light-hearted maker of ducks-and-drakes in the worn, unconscious man, so close to death, he longed with all the eagerness that was in him, that, ere he had to leave him to death, he might have the chance of saying some word for the Master. For these eighteen months of hard, practical work in the slums of London while they had sobered Morris Pugh, had left him still ardent.
"Hullo!" said Ned weakly. "I've seen you before somewhere--haven't I?" He paused, and some one gave him another spoonful of stimulant. He wondered vaguely why he took it, since death must come; but it was as well to please people--if you could. "I remember now," he went on, as if he were recalling it from very far away. "It was when we hid the hundred pounds. You were the parson who said, 'Money was the root of all evil.'" He gave a ghost of a smile, then looked into the dark eyes curiously. "I suppose you took it?"
Morris Pugh flushed at the very memory of that never-to-be-forgotten search for God's providence on the mountain-top.
"So it was you who made the ducks and drakes--I remember," he said slowly. "No! I did not take it; but--but I looked for it, and it was gone."
"Gone," echoed Ned, and lay thinking.
"Then it must have been Ted who took it," he murmured, going back into the past. "He must have gone that midsummer night--why, yes! of course----" Then suddenly his dulled mind grasped the whole sequence of events. "He--and Hirsch--that is how he got Aura--my money--damn him!"
"Hush!" came Morris Pugh's voice sternly. "You stand too close to the judgment yourself for curses----"
"I--I will say bless him, if that suits you better," murmured Ned wearily. "And if you don't mind--I prefer to stand alone."
"No man can stand alone before the judgment seat of God," pleaded Morris Pugh earnestly. "I do not know what your life has been, but the best of us need an advocate; and there is One."
"My life?" echoed Ned dreamily. "I want to forget my life--not to talk about it--if you would go--and leave me." Then he opened his eyes again. "Did you bring me here?"