“Not yet. Her father and mother have gone to Florida, and she has been staying on at Westwood House--what time she hasn’t been down here coddling you. She’s an angel, Vance; one of the kind you read about. But I mustn’t let you talk too much.” “If I can’t talk, you’ll have to. Have you made it up with Elizabeth--about that silly side-play of yours with Richardia?” Carfax’s smile began on the cherubic lines but it ended in a mere face-wrinkling of soberness. “We have had too much else to think about; too many little diversions, as you might say. But I’m hoping she isn’t going to insist upon making a horrible example of me for my apparent fickleness.” “‘Too many little diversions’,” Tregarvon echoed. “That reminds me: I can remember you and the others pulling us out of the crevice--Hartridge and me--and after that, a stretcher was made for Hartridge and we used up an age or so getting back to the glade. Am I right, so far?” “It was something like that; yes.” “And when we came into the old burying-ground the motor-car had been run down opposite the tool-house, and its headlamps made everything look ghastly. The judge was sitting on the door-step with his face hidden in his hands, and Rucker’s cot was standing in the open under the lights with a blanketed corpse lying upon it. Who was the dead man, Poictiers?” Carfax shook his head. “Call it a bad dream,” he said soothingly. “The cracked skull was beginning to get in its work. You didn’t see any dead man.” Tregarvon closed his eyes wearily. “It’s passing strange how a little knock on the head can mix things. I could swear that I saw the judge and the dead man and the car just as I have described them. Let it go, and tell me about Richardia.” Carfax seemed suddenly embarrassed. “I--I don’t know as there is much to tell,” he stammered. “She--she is well, I believe.” Tregarvon raised himself on an elbow. “You’re keeping something back,” he protested. “Is she--is she--married?” “Oh, no; nothing of that sort,” was the hasty reply. “She has been here to see you--she and her father--quite often; that is, as often as possible. I have fetched them in the car, you know. They have left nothing undone that could be done.” Tregarvon still felt the presence of a reservation; of many of them; but he was too weak to fight for the clearer explication. “How is Hartridge getting along?” he asked, sinking back upon the pillows. “Rather slowly. It was a bad fracture. But the doctor says he won’t be a cripple.” “That’s good. I want him to get well so that I can drag him into court. He set the leaf fire that blew us up. Did you know that?” The golden youth nodded gravely. “I know a good many things that I didn’t know before you got your knockout.” “Bring me down to date,” said the sick man impatiently. “What have you done about the mine?” Carfax seemed to welcome the change to the more material field.