Though not dead, he had, when discovered, been in the last stage of exhaustion. The doctor telephoned for had at once discovered that what we already suspected was truethe man's left ankle was very badly sprained. It must, he said, have been sprained ten or twelve days previously. In addition, the man was almost like a skeleton.
"You found him not an hour too soon," the doctor said when, after completing his diagnosis, and giving instructions concerning the treatment of his patient to the nurse who had just arrived, he rejoined us in the smoking-room downstairs. "He is in a state of complete collapse. For days he has evidently not touched food."
He looked at us in turn with an odd expression as he said this. He was clearly mystified at finding a man at Holt Manor dying of starvationa starving man dressed for the chase, a man obviously of refinement, and undoubtedly to be described as a gentleman.
Sir Roland decided under the circumstances to tell the doctor everything: how the man's presence had been discovered by Dick, how we had afterwards found him lying upon the floor of the hiding-hole, apparently dead, and how, with the help of ropes, we had finally pulled him out. The doctor had, of course, heard of the robbery at Holt nearly a fortnight before, and he at once put two and two together.
For two days the stranger quivered between life and death. Two nurses were in constant attendance, and the doctor called frequently. It was on the afternoon of the third day that he expressed a desire to talk to Sir Roland; he had, until then, been allowed to speak only a word or two.
He wanted, he said, "to speak with Sir Roland alone"; but to this Sir Roland would not agree.
"If you want to speak to me, you can speak quite freely before this gentleman," he said; I was in the room at the time.
At first the man seemed distressed, but at last, finding that Sir Roland would make no concession, he said in a weak voice:
"I'm dying, Sir Roland, I feel it, and before I go there are things I should like to say to youthings that it may be to your advantage to hear."
His voice, I noticed, had in it the timbre peculiar to the voices of men of education.