“I can’t make a pretty speech in return for that, Miss Bellwood,” he replied, “but you know how much more comfortable I shall be to know that you are all safe.”
“It will be trespassing sadly upon you,” said Gertrude, in formal tones.
“Yes, terribly,” he said drily. “But it suits me exactly, for I want to sit down and think.”
He had plenty of time for thought during the long hours of that painful night. The ladies ostensibly went off to bed, while the gentlemen occupied the dining-room, the doctor rising from time to time to go in to see his patient, who lay in a complete stupor—overcome for the time being by the potency of the medicine which had been administered.
It was a slow, dreary watch, for all were more or less exhausted by the struggle which they had had, but no one complained, and three o’clock had arrived when, on going once more into the study, the doctor found that the gardener was nodding.
“You will have to go and lie down, my man,” said the doctor coldly.
“Beg pardon, sir; very sorry,” said the man apologetically. “Bit drowsy, but if you’d stop here a quarter of an hour while I go and walk round the yard and garden, kill a few slugs, and have a quiet pipe, I shall come back as fresh as a daisy.”
“Very well, my man, go; but tell the gentlemen in the dining-room first.”
The gardener went out into the kitchen, filled his pipe, took the matches from the chimney-piece, and went out, telling himself that this were the rummest start he knew, and wondering what master would say if he came back and found Mr Saul ill there.
Meanwhile George Harrington sat in the dining-room thinking over the problem he had set himself to solve, till he felt perfectly convinced that Saul had, for some reason, had an encounter with the dog, been severely bitten, and had then nearly killed his assailant, leaving him for dead.