At the lodge-gate he stopped for a moment to order a general smartening up of that quarter. Alas! on the other side was an objectionable old woman, a friend who had before given him so much trouble. Sir Watkin’s disgust was only equalled by his anger. He was in no amiable mood, as the old woman clearly saw. She almost wished she had not come; she felt all of a tremble, as she said, as she asked him kindly to stop and hear what she had got to say. He muttered something very much unlike a blessing on his tormentor. He would have ridden over her had he not stopped his horse, which strongly opposed the idea of stopping. Could that old creature have any claim on him? The idea was ridiculous. And as to listening to her, why, that was quite out of the question for so fine a gentleman. She made an effort to clutch the rein. The high-spirited steed resented the indignity. In the scuffle the Baronet was unseated, and was taken up insensible. ‘Sure ’nough he’s dead as a stone,’ said the ploughman, who had first noticed him. ‘He’s nothing of the kind,’ said the gate-keeper, who was soon on the spot, ‘Get on the horse and ride to Sloville for the doctor,’ said he to the ploughman, while he and the other servants bore the body to the lodge-gate, where it was laid upon a bed. The doctor came. ‘No bones broken,’ said he, after a cursory examination, ‘but a severe concussion of the brain. Draw down the blinds; put ice on his forehead; keep him quiet, and he may yet rally. In the meantime I will telegraph to London for the great surgeon, Sir Henry Johnson. If anybody can save him he can.’ The hours that day in that low lodge moved very slowly. No wife, no mother, no sister was there. The old mother had left that day for Scotland. Only one sister was alive, and she was with her husband in Italy; only the housekeeper from the Hall was there to sit and watch and sigh, for she had known Sir Watkin from a baby, and was as proud of him as it behoved her to be, never believing any of the scandals connected with his name, and, indeed, scarcely hearing of them, for his wilder life was out of her sight and hearing. At home he was the model English gentleman; and then, again, when evil things were said of him, she refused to listen. ‘It was not her place,’ she said, ‘to hear bad spoken of any of the family of which she and hers generations before had been retainers.’ About mid-day came a telegram to say that the great Sir Henry was coming down, and that there was to be a carriage at the railway-station to meet him. In a couple of hours after came Sir Henry himself—a calm, dignified man of science, who lived in a world of which science is god, and was interested in humanity as a subject of dissection or operation. Apart from that, he had a poor opinion of human nature.