Adam was in one of his attacks of pain, nay, of agony. It could be called nothing less. It was not, however, for death; the sharpness of the paroxysm, with its attendant signs, had misled Ann Hopley. Rose looked scarcely less ill than her husband. Her most grievous position was telling upon her. Her little child dead, her husband apparently dying, danger and dread of another sort on all sides. More like a shadow was she now than a living woman.
"Do you know what I have been thinking, Rose?" said Karl, when his brother had revived. "That we might trust Moore. You hear, Adam. I think he might be trusted."
"Trusted for what?" returned Adam; not in his sometimes fierce voice, but in one very weak and faint.
He was lying on the sofa. Rose sat at the end of it, Karl in a chair at the side.
"To see you; to hear who you are. I cannot help believing that he would be true as steel. Moore is one of those men, as it seems to me, that we might trust our lives with."
"It won't do to run risks, old fellow. I do not want to be captured in my last hours."
Karl believed there would be no risk. Mr. Moore was a truly good man, sensible and benevolent. The more he dwelt on the idea, the surer grew his conviction that the surgeon might be trusted. Rose, who was almost passive in her distress, confessed she liked him. Both he and his sister gave her the impression of being, as Karl worded it, true as steel. Ann Hopley was in favour of it too. She put the case with much ingenuity.
"Sir, I should think there's not a doctor in the world--at least, one worthy the name--who would not keep such a secret, confided to him of necessity, even if he were a bad man. And Mr. Moore's a good one."
And the decision was made. Karl was to feel his way to the confidence. He would sound the surgeon first, and act accordingly.
"Not that it much signifies either way," cried Sir Adam, his careless manner reviving as his strength and spirits returned. "Die I soon must, I suppose, now; but I'd rather die in my bed here than on a pallet in a cell. So, Karlo, old friend, if you like to see what Moore's made of, do so."