Henry looked as displeased as his subservient position made advisable. "Hif you please, sir, I have quite a 'and with the hinjured and--" "He's only stunned," said his master impatiently. "I 'll attend to him myself." And he banged the door in the servant's face. The man lay on the lounge precisely as Henry had happened to place him, his averted face half buried in the pillows. Investigation showed that he had no bloody gash on his head: that was Henry's imagination. There did not, in fact, seem to be a mark on him beyond three small scratches on his forehead. Stanhope put his hand under the chin and turned it toward him, none too gently. For a full moment he stood motionless, staring down at that white face so like his own. Then he dipped his hand in the glass, and splashed a handful of water upon the closed eyes. At the first touch of it, the still figure of the injured man stirred with faint signs of returning consciousness. Far down in a black and utter void, he sensed the first glimmer of distant light. Slowly, slowly, the glimmer grew. The silence within gave place to a vast roaring in his ears and indescribable pain in his head; and the dull glow which had seemed to him the shining frontier of some far new world whither he was gratefully journeying, resolved itself into a circle of greenish light. "Drink this," said a soft but peremptory voice. He drank, incuriously; and the fiery liquid ran to his head and heart and shot new life into his dead limbs. But the more his lost strength came back to his body, the more he was aware of the terrible pain in his head. It occurred to him vaguely that when once he opened his eyes, which he would have to do some time, there would be a horrible explosion and his head would go off like a sky-rocket. "You feel better now," asserted rather than inquired the voice. "Much. Thanks to you. It's only--my head. Something seems to be wrong with it, a little." "Somebody hit you there with a club, from behind. You remember now, don't you? Who was it?" "I don't know," said Varney wearily. "Oh, come! Your head isn't as bad as all that--there's not even a bump on it. Think a moment. An old man, with long hair and gray whiskers. You must know who it was." Varney pressed his hand upon his racking forehead. "Oh! So it was he--then. Poor old Orrick." The author's face lost something of its color. "Orrick!... What--what has this fellow got against you?"