goodness."

"I'll be in good time for the four o'clock," said Septimus. "This is the
way I generally travel. I told you." He rose, swayed a bit, and put his
hand on the table to steady himself. "I'll go and wait at the station. Then
I'll be sure to catch it. You see I must go."

"But why?" cried Zora.

"Wiggleswick's letter. The house has been burnt down and everything in it.
The only thing he saved was a large portrait of Queen Victoria."

Then he fainted.

* * * * *

Zora had him carried to a room in the hotel and sent for a doctor, who kept
him in bed for a fortnight. Zora and Turner nursed him, much to his
apologetic content. The Callenders in the meanwhile went to Berlin.

When Septimus got up, gaunt and staring, he appealed to the beholder as the
most helpless thing which the Creator had clothed in the semblance of a
man.

"He must take very great care of himself for the next few weeks," said the
doctor. "If he gets a relapse I won't answer for the consequences. Can't
you take him somewhere?"

"Take him somewhere?" The idea had been worrying her for some days past. If
she left him to his own initiative he would probably go and camp with