The assistance arrived late in the day in the shape of an elderly woman,
whose Spartan treatment of her patients had helped many along the silent
road. She commenced her reign by punching the sick man's pillows, and
having shaken him into consciousness by this means, gave him a dose of
physic, after first tasting it herself from the bottle.

After the first rally the innkeeper began to fail slowly. It was seldom
that he understood what was said to him, and pitiful to the beholder to
see in his intervals of consciousness his timid anxiety to earn the good-
will of the all-powerful Gunn. His strength declined until assistance
was needed to turn him in the bed, and his great sinewy hands were
forever trembling and fidgeting on the coverlet.

Joan, pale with grief and fear, tended him assiduously. Her stepfather's
strength had been a proverb in the town, and many a hasty citizen had
felt the strength of his arm. The increasing lawlessness of the house
filled her with dismay, and the coarse attentions of Gunn became more
persistent than ever. She took her meals in the sick-room, and divided
her time between that and her own.

Gunn himself was in a dilemma. With Mullet dead, his power was at an end
and his visions of wealth dissipated. He resolved to feather his nest
immediately, and interviewed the surgeon. The surgeon was ominously
reticent, the nurse cheerfully ghoulish.

"Four days I give him," she said, calmly; "four blessed days, not but
what he might slip away at any moment."

Gunn let one day of the four pass, and then, choosing a time when Joan