cheeks were leaden-hued, his eyes closed, and from his blue lips
came with each laboured breath a faint, moaning noise.

Mr. Blood stood for a moment silently considering his patient. He
deplored that a youth with such bright hopes in life as Lord Gildoy's
should have risked all, perhaps existence itself, to forward the
ambition of a worthless adventurer. Because he had liked and
honoured this brave lad he paid his case the tribute of a sigh.
Then he knelt to his task, ripped away doublet and underwear to
lay bare his lordship's mangled side, and called for water and linen
and what else he needed for his work.

He was still intent upon it a half-hour later when the dragoons
invaded the homestead. The clatter of hooves and hoarse shouts
that heralded their approach disturbed him not at all. For one
thing, he was not easily disturbed; for another, his task absorbed
him. But his lordship, who had now recovered consciousness,
showed considerable alarm, and the battle-stained Jeremy Pitt sped
to cover in a clothes-press. Baynes was uneasy, and his wife and
daughter trembled. Mr. Blood reassured them.

"Why, what's to fear?" he said. "It's a Christian country, this, and
Christian men do not make war upon the wounded, nor upon those who
harbour them." He still had, you see, illusions about Christians.
He held a glass of cordial, prepared under his directions, to his
lordship's lips. "Give your mind peace, my lord. The worst is done."

And then they came rattling and clanking into the stone-flagged hall
- a round dozen jack-booted, lobster-coated troopers of the Tangiers
Regiment, led by a sturdy, black-browed fellow with a deal of gold