"Oh, Mr. Tincroft, what is it?"
"Your brother is in a dead faint," he said; "you had better call for help."
And then he busied himself, in his ordinary awkward way, no doubt, in loosening his poor friend's neck-gear, gently placing a loving arm around him for support, while Elizabeth sprang forward with a hysterical cry of:
"Walter, Walter! Brother Walter! Dear brother!"
We shift the scene to a bedchamber in High Beech farmhouse. Walter Wilson had been conveyed thither, and tenderly laid down by rough-handed, but kindly-hearted farm labourers, when he had recovered consciousness sufficiently to admit of removal from the holly arbour. It had been his cousin Sarah's bedroom of old, and was little altered from what it then was. The apartment had been yielded, not very willingly, by Mrs. George Wilson, on the representation that her husband's brother could not, in his present state, be removed to his father's house at Low Beech.
At his side were John Tincroft and Elizabeth Wilson, lovingly tending him, and obeying the directions of a neighbouring surgeon who had been hastily summoned.
When all that skill could suggest had been done, John drew the doctor aside.
"Is the case serious?" he asked.
"He will live forty-eight hours—perhaps twice forty-eight, possibly a week; but he will never rise from that bed except by a miracle," was the reply.
There was no returning to the Manor House to dine that day; and a message was sent by John Tincroft to that effect, stating the reason why.