CHAPTER XVIII.
A FURTHER FIND.
I awoke quite naturally, as though from a deep sleep, to find myself in bed, with Mrs. Coverthorne and a strange gentleman standing close by, looking down at me as I lay. I recognized the room, and had some hazy idea that this was a continuation of my summer holiday.
"Well?" said the gentleman, smiling; "feeling better after your nap?"
I felt too drowsy to reply, but languidly allowed the stranger to feel my pulse, which he did after lugging a huge watch out of his fob.
"Keep him snug in bed for a day or two," I heard him say, "and he'll be all right. Forty years ago I dare say I could have gone through it myself without much hurt. I'll make up something, and send it by the boy."
I was asleep again before they left the room, and did not wake till Mrs. Coverthorne roused me to take some beef tea. Slowly, as I swallowed the nourishment, I began to wonder why I was propped up in bed, being fed with a spoon in my old room at Coverthorne. Had I been ill? or had I met with an accident? What had Miles and I been doing? Then suddenly, like a landscape coming into view through a quickly-vanishing mist, the recollection of past events came flooding into my mind. I remembered it all now—the captured coach, the sea cavern, and the dark subterranean tunnel.
"George!" I cried—"George Woodley! Is he safe? He was with me in the passage."
"Yes, he's quite safe," answered Mrs. Coverthorne, with a smile. "He's down in the kitchen now, having his dinner. You shall see him again by-and-by, but just for the present you must keep very quiet and not talk."
It seemed no hardship for the time being to lie warm and snug in bed, and in the wakeful intervals between my dozes I recalled and pieced together the whole story of our adventure. Once when I woke I was surprised to find Mr. Denny in the room, standing gazing out of the window with his hands under his coat tails. Some slight movement on my part caused him to turn; he smiled and nodded, and moved towards the bed.