"English?" asked the landlord, looking down on the scarred face and eager eyes of the stranger, who lay silent on the litter, glancing round uneasily at the faces about him. "Some of us would have known French, or German, or Italian," was the reply, "but not one of us knows English." "Nor I," said the landlord; "and our English speaker went away last week, over the St. Gothard to Italy for the winter. Send round, Marie," he went on, speaking to his wife, "and find out any one in Engelberg who knows English. See! The poor fellow is trying to say something now." "I can speak English," said Roland, pushing his way in amid the crowd and kneeling down beside the litter, on which a rough bed of fir pine-branches had been made. The unknown face beneath his eyes was drawn with pain, and the gaze that met his was one of earnest entreaty. "I am dying," he murmured; "don't let them torture me. Only let me be laid on a bed to die in peace." "I will take care of you," said Roland in his pleasant and soothing voice, speaking as tenderly as if he had been saying "God bless you!" to Felix in his little cot; "trust yourself to me. They shall do for you only what I think best." The stranger closed his eyes with an expression of relief, and Roland, taking up one corner of the litter, helped to carry it gently into the nearest bedroom. He was gifted with something of a woman's softness of touch, and with a woman's delicate sympathy with pain; and presently, though not without some moans and cries, the injured man was resting peacefully on a bed: not unconscious, but looking keenly from face to face on the people surrounding him. "Are you English?" he asked, looking at Roland's blistered face and his worn peasant's dress. "Yes," he answered. "Is there any surgeon here?" he inquired. "No English surgeon," replied Roland. "I do not know if there is one even at Lucerne, and none could come to you for many hours. But there must be some one at the monastery close by, if not in the village--" "No, no!" he interrupted, "I shall not live many hours; but promise me--I am quite helpless as you see--promise me that you will not let any village doctor pull me about." "They are sometimes very skilful," urged Roland, "and you do not know that you must really die." "I knew it as I was slipping," he answered; "at the first moment I knew it, though I clutched at the very stones to keep me from falling. Why! I was dead when they found me; only the pain of being pulled about brought me back to life. I'm not afraid to die if they will let me die in peace." "I will promise not to leave you," replied Roland; "and if you must die, it shall be in peace."