It was at this juncture that Mrs. Burke put her threat into execution, and drove over to Taloona in a big old-fashioned waggonette with Patsy perched on the box and a store of blankets inside.
"I've come to do my share of the work," she told the doctor. "They stopped me from coming before—I was turned back by a trooper a mile from the house. But I'm tired of waiting for word how the poor fellows are, and have just come to take one of them away with me."
She had driven right up to the huts, and the sound of her voice penetrated both. Old Dudgeon, striving to sit up, stared at Mrs. Eustace with gleaming eyes.
"That devil," he muttered. "It's her voice. I'd know it in a million. Keep her away! Don't let her come near me, or I'll——"
"Hush, you must not get excited," Mrs. Eustace said, as she gently pushed him back. "No one is coming in here. I'll see to that. I'll shut the door and bolt them out."
In the other hut the patient's eyes also gleamed, but with a different light. The forced inaction, the solitude, the wearying monotony of lying still, to one accustomed to a life full of incident and action, was more than trying; but when, as was the case with Durham, there was urgent and engrossing work to be done, the compulsory delay aggravated the evils of the injury he had sustained.
Through the long hours he chafed against the helplessness which prevented him from following up the clue he had already obtained, but still more did he chafe against his inability to renew his acquaintance with the woman who had fascinated him.
He was anxious to make headway in her estimation so that he would have some understanding, however slight, with her when the recovery of her papers and the winning of the reward gave him the opportunity of offering her marriage. His impatience bred many fancies in his mind. Daily he pictured to himself the danger of someone else becoming his rival in her affections.
Were he free to see her he did not fear defeat; but while he was lying helpless at Taloona anything might be happening at Waroona Downs.
That morning the doctor had told him it would be weeks before he would be well enough to resume work if he did not make more rapid progress. He had poured out professional platitudes against the folly of fretting and worrying against the inevitable, but neither his platitudes nor the soundness of his reasoning could still the eager longing which was at the root of the patient's retarded convalescence.