done, and I will strive to move him easily.'

The injured man, hearing an unfamiliar voice, opened his eyes wearily and looked at the new

comer.

'I do not know you,' he said languidly; but thank you. I wish I could thank you better.' 'You must not talk,' exclaimed the doctor.

'I try to do all you tell me,' answered the sick man wearily and slowly; but O, what a trouble I am to every one.'

'Trouble!' repeated the doctor cheerily. I think it is you who have all the trouble. Now don't be afraid, I am not going to hurt you.'

Quickly and skilfully he lifted him up a little, and then motioning the stranger to take his place, proceeded with his dressings as rapidly as possible.

Terrible were the injuries that poor body had received-ribs broken, chest damaged. Almost Almost before a minute was elapsed the new-comer felt the sick man's head fall heavily against his breast, and the doctor, looking up at a sudden exclamation, saw his patient had fainted.

'He is so weak,' was his comment; hold him a minute longer. I have almost done. Lay him down now,' he added, almost directly afterwards, and the stranger complied with such deft gentleness, such tender carefulness, as elicited an encomium from the doctor.

Drawing his arm slowly away, he shifted the head from his breast to the pillow, and then stood looking at the sufferer.

In the days to come, in the days and weeks and months and years that were to follow, he would have given all he possessed, all he was ever likely to possess, to be able to lay down memory as he

then lay down that burden, to forget the placid look on that insensible face, and the expression which came into it after he was restored to consciousness, and tried to smile the gratitude he could not speak.

CHAPTER VI.

ALL FOR LOVE.

THEY lingered beside him some little time, the doctor giving such stimulants as his state required, the stranger moving softly about, regulating the light and arranging the poor draperies according to the directions whispered to him.

'I think he will go to sleep,' said Doctor Dilton, regarding his patient thoughtfully. I will look in again before midday, Mr. Palthorpe; and remember you are not to harass yourself about anything. The quieter you keep, the quicker you will get well.'

He was moving away, when he noticed a feeble movement of the hand lying outside the coverlet, and seeing what the sick man wanted, took the wasted fingers in his own, and stooped down to catch the words that trembled upon those pallid lips.

'I-do-not-know-how to

thank you.'

'Thank me! Pooh; nonsense! I have been able to do nothing for you yet; but I hope to accomplish a great deal. Now go to sleep. Shut your eyes; you must not try to look at us.'

And making a sign to the stranger, he turned towards the door.

'Good-bye, Mr. Palthorpe; I trust you will soon be restored to health,' said the gentleman, who was about to resume his walk westward towards London, just

touching the sick man's hand as he followed Doctor Dilton.

Mr. Palthorpe opened his eyes and looked sadly at the speaker.

'I shall never,' he was beginning, when the doctor interposed.

'You must not talk or be talked to. Come away,' he added almost roughly to the stranger, who had certainly not meant to do any harm by his somewhat conventional speech. 'I beg your pardon for my apparent rudeness,' he said, when they stood at the foot of the stairs; but he will try to speak, and he is not strong enough for such exertion.'

'I am sorry to have been so indiscreet,' said the stranger, not at all offended in reality, though for a second he had looked a little annoyed; I ought not to have. spoken to him.'

'No one could have behaved more kindly,' declared the doctor, with frank courtesy, and then he passed out into the garden, now flooded with morning sunshine, in the full glory of which Mrs. Palthorpe stood idly and discontentedly putting with listless fingers some flowers together for a bouquet.

To her Doctor Dilton at once addressed himself with terrible candour and but scant courtesy.

'Your husband is much worse to-day.'

'Yes; I do not know how those bandages happened to slip.' 'You were asleep, I suppose?' interrogatively.

'Yes, I had just fallen asleep,' defiantly.

'He is very ill indeed; dangerously ill.'

'I told you in my note he seemed very bad.'

It was curious to see how they looked at each other, while they spoke with subdued voices in tones that never rose above a whisper.

Upon his face there rested an expression of irritation and disapproval, on hers one of unconcealed dislike.

The stranger, watching them both, felt the doctor was harsh and unfeeling; all his sympathies were enlisted in favour of the woman who had so grievous a burden laid upon her. In the sick-room his manner had been different; but there his professional instincts were aroused. Here he had to do not with a woman who was ill; on the contrary, Mrs. Palthorpe's health seemed, judging from appearances, to be superb, and he treated her, so argued the spectator, accordingly.

He must have a nurse,' Doctor Dilton resumed, drawing on his gloves, thoughtfully, as he made this declaration.

'I do not know how she is going to be paid and fed, then,' said Mrs. Palthorpe, flinging the words at him with a fine disregard of reticence and civility.

'I will see to that,' answered the doctor, and in his manner he did not even attempt to conceal the antipathy he felt.

'Of course you must do as you think best,' she replied, more quietly than the unwilling listener expected.

'Yes, I must,' argued the doctor; it is too much for you. It would be too much for any person single-handed; and I want to pull him through if I can.'

'Do you not think he would have been far better in the hospital?' she asked, misled perhaps by the allusion to herself.

'Far better,' agreed the doctor, with suspicious readiness. 'So I say,' she remarked.

'Yes; but so he did not say, unfortunately;' and with this retort, the tone of which conveyed much more than the words, he

walked down the short walk and out of the gate without going through the slightest ceremony of leave-taking.

But the stranger was not similarly negligent.

As he bade her farewell, he said very earnestly he hoped her anxieties might soon be lessened.

It is a terrible trial for you,' he added kindly, and with an appearance of genuine sympathy.

She looked at him suddenly as he spoke-lifted those wonderful eyes for a moment to his, and then in an instant turned her head aside, that he might not see the tears that had started to them all unbidden.

He could not, however, avoid observing her emotion, any more than he could fail to perceive that her lip quivered and her face flushed.

'I wish it were in my power to help you in any way,' he said tentatively.

'No one can help me,' she answered; but thank you all the same; and with a hasty goodmorning she turned from him and reëntered the house.

He stood looking after her for a second, and might have stood longer had the voice of the doctor not recalled him from dreamland.

Are you going my way?' asked that gentleman, 'because if so, we may as well walk together.'

'I shall be glad to walk with you,' answered the other, hastily passing out from among the stocks and carnations on to the arid footpath bordering the highway to Romford.

'That is a sad case, doctor,' he remarked, looking back at the cottage, and letting his eyes rest on the windows of the room where the injured man lay.

'Indeed it is; sadder than any outsider could imagine.'

'You seem to take a great interest in Mr. Palthorpe.'

Well, I do. Theoretically a doctor ought not to care more for one patient than another-ought to write his prescriptions for Hecate with as steady a hand as for Venus -but practically we are as other men, and have our likes and dislikes, our favourites and our aversions. From the time I was called in to see that poor fellow I took a fancy to him. I would give a good deal to keep him alive, though why I should trouble myself so much about it I am sure I do not know. After all, life is often but a doubtful blessing.'

'I should think life might hold a good deal worth having for a man so young as he is. A long future is before him.' 'Possibly, but a past is behind him, certainly.'

You say that significantly.' 'I meant to say it significantly. He is one of the few men I ever met who risked a fortune for a woman's sake, lost a fortune for a woman's sake, and who is more loyally faithful to the woman now than when he first looked in her face.'

'Was it really so?"

'Really. This is how it came about; there is no secret in the matter: the wife's aunt told me how it happened when she came up after the accident.'

Excuse my interrupting you for one moment; how did the accident occur?'

'Simply and prosaically enough. He was running to catch an omnibus in Stratford, and did not observe a van trotting round the corner of Angel-lane. Phoof! he was active and well and running across the road one second, and the next he was under the horses' feet with one of the wheels going over him. If the carman had not owned a wrist of iron and pulled

up instantly-I don't know how the fellow did it, I confess, for there is a slight descent at that point he never could have been picked up alive. As it was they carried him into a chemist's shop close at hand and sent for me. When I saw him I thought there was only one thing to do, and that one thing was to take him to the London Hospital. I confess I did not think he could ever get there; but the chance seemed worth trying, and we were going to risk it, when he opened his eyes and looked at me.

'I saw there was a question and an entreaty in them, so I told him what we were about to do, and that he would receive every care and attention.

'He managed to get out the one word "Home." I thought he had not understood what I said, and so repeated that his best chance lay in being taken to the hospital.

'There came an expression into his eyes I shall never forget; the struggle of despair and agony, with the physical inability to contend against my decision, touched me to the heart. I have attended many men in accidents, but I never met with a case before where the mind seemed to remain so active in a body so crushed and injured.

I stooped down over him. "Home," he gasped; "wife." "Would you rather we took you home?" I asked.

'There came a light into his face that not all the pain he was enduring could darken.

"Remember," I said, "they can do far more for you at the hospital than anywhere else."

Ah, no,"-I guessed the words almost, for I could scarcely hear him speak.

'Well, how was I to know what sort of house and wife the man

had? A doctor is aware there are homes and homes, and wives and wives, and naturally I thought "he has drawn a prize out of the marriage bag, and if he is to die he may as well die amongst those he loves, and if he is to live he will be sure of good nursing." That was what ran through my mind, and I was just about to look if I could find any card or letter upon him that might give his address, when a little errand-boy, from a grocer's near by, said:

"Please, sir, I know who he is. He lives up the Romford-road, and his name is Palthorpe, that is what it is."

'Well, to cut a long story short, I went on to break the news.

A

gentleman I knew had been passing at the time, and his brougham stood outside, so we put the boy on the box beside the coachman and told him to stop at the house.

'When I saw the place we have just left my heart misgave me; but it was too late then to repair the mischief, so I went in and saw Mrs. Palthorpe, and told her as carefully as I could what had happened.'

Poor soul, what a shock it must have been! How did she take it, doctor?'

The doctor looked with a queer expression at the man who asked this question, but he answered gravely enough:

เ

Very badly indeed. No; she did not faint or go into hysterics or anything of that sort,' he went on hurriedly, preventing any remark upon his statement, "but she took it badly. I don't know that I ever knew a woman receive bad tidings in a worse manner. "She won't be of much use as a nurse," I thought; and as for the house-well, you have seen what that is.

"Even now I scarcely know how

he was got up-stairs. Fortunately he had fainted, and remained unconscious till some time after, when he found himself in his own room and lying on his own bed.'

'The scene between husband and wife was dreadfully affecting, I suppose?'

Once more the doctor looked at his companion curiously.

'It affected me, at any rate,' he answered dryly. 'I never felt so sorry for any man before. It was evident he had felt a passionate attachment for her, indeed no one who was not passionately attached to a woman would have made the sacrifice for her he did.'

'Ay, you were going to tell me about that, by the bye.'

'So I was. Miss Aggles, that is Mrs. Palthorpe's aunt, gave me all particulars; but Mrs. Palthorpe herself had led me to believe there was a story.'

'What did she say?' asked the stranger eagerly.

'She never says much to me,' answered the doctor; 'and the way she came to say even what she did was simple enough. I did not think he could live, and so asked her if I should telegraph to his friends.'

'He has none," she answered. "That is impossible," I said. "What do you mean?"

"He has none really," she persisted.

"But every one has friends," I answered; "why should he be an exception to all rules?"

"Because he has no money, and because he married me," she declared.

'Of course I could not get over that dead wall, so I changed my tactics.

"I suppose you have friends, though?" I said.

"I have relations, if that is what you mean."

VOL. XXXVII. NO. CCXVIII.

"Should you like me to telegraph to them ?"

"Yes, I should," she replied, and the strangest expression came into her face; "you can send to Miss Aggles, Sunnydown Farm, near Ravelsmede, Hampshire."

'It was not long before Miss Aggles came up. If crying could have done any good Mr. Palthorpe would now be walking about the neighbourhood. She seemed very sorry for his misfortune, and said her father would do what he could. She told me Mr. Palthorpe's uncle had disinherited him because he married her niece Miranda; that is the lady's Christian name. Young Palthorpe, it appears, married the girl secretly, and the affair was kept quiet for a while.

'But when the old Squire lay on his deathbed some goodnatured friend excited his suspicions, and he sent for his nephew, and told him what he had heard.

"You know, Tom," -Miss Aggles told me this "you know, Tom," he said, "I always vowed I would cut you off with a shilling if you married old Bob Aggles's granddaughter."

'And the young man answered, Yes, he knew that.

66

Well, I have had a will drawn up," the Squire went on, "leaving everything I have in the world to charities; but before signing it I thought I would give you another chance. I don't want any oath or swearing, or that kind of solemnity, but just tell me, Tom, that you won't marry the girl when I am gone, and things shall be between us as they were."

'Everybody thought the Squire was trying to leave him a loophole, for he loved his nephew, and that he wanted him, if he could not answer straightforwardly, to equivocate; but the young fellow