“I did give you a heavy blow that night in the hotel, I admit; the case was desperate, and I knew I must not fail to lay you out the first time. If you had not escaped, I should have given you up to the authorities, and you would doubtless have been serving out your sentence now, instead of lying here. But you are wounded and suffering, you will probably, be sick a long time, and however much I may think you deserve punishment for your past crimes, your condition appeals to my humanity. As a sufferer, you are, instead of an enemy and a robber, my neighbor, my friend, and as such I shall treat you while you lie here,” Earle explained, and there was no mistaking the friendliness of his tones. “Your neighbor! your friend!” Tom Drake repeated, in low, suppressed tones, and feeling almost as if he had got into a new world. “Yes, just that; and now, to ease your mind and make you trust me, I will tell you that no one save the doctor, myself, and my servants, know what transpired last night, and no one else will know of the affair while you are sick here. Now go to sleep, if you can.” Earle moved away without giving him a chance to reply, the man watching his retreating figure in stupid amazement. CHAPTER XLII TOM DRAKE’S TRUST Tom Drake did have a hard time, as the physician predicted and Earle feared. He paid dearly for his one night’s adventure within the walls of Wycliffe; and yet, perchance, the end will prove it to have been a “blessing in disguise.” For three weeks he raved in the wildest delirium of fever, unconscious alike of his own condition, the care he was receiving, or the trouble and weariness he caused, and it was three weeks longer before the skilful physician pronounced him out of danger, or would give any hope that the wounded limb could be saved. “Save it if you can, doctor; the poor fellow has had a rough time of it, and I should dislike to send him away from here a cripple,” Earle had pleaded, when the doctor spoke of amputation. “He will be a cripple any way; so much of the bone is diseased and will have to come out, that the leg will always be weak, and he will be lame, even if we save it. But for your sake I will do my best, though it is more than the wretch deserves,” grumbled the physician. He had not much faith or patience in nursing the “miserable wretch,” as he called him. “Like enough he will turn round and cut your throat, some fine day, when he gets well. Such people have no feeling, no gratitude; they are like the brutes and have no souls, and should be treated accordingly.” “‘Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these,’” Earle gravely repeated once, after one of the doctor’s outbursts. “Humph! such high-toned philanthropy will doubtless be rewarded in a way you don’t expect.”