The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little, and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula.
He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a little black ball of steel.
While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back naturally to a realisation of things.
While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stood holding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth Lansing came back into the room.
Seeing her father’s eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and was about to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father’s voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stopped her.
“The White Horse Chaplain!” he said in a voice of slow wonder. “But I always knew he’d come for me sometime. And I suppose it’s time.”
The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years.
The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heard the tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her that her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly and so certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was an apparition 14 that she could not think or reason herself out of her fright.
The Bishop answered easily and quietly: