"What is the matter with you?" she suddenly inquired. "There has been an accident, Rose. Not fatal, my dear, so don't be frightened. My grandfather has been thrown from his carriage and stunned. But he has recovered consciousness, and they are bringing him home a deal shaken, but not in serious danger." While Sylvan spoke, Rose gazed at him in perfect silence, with her blue eyes widening. When he finished, she asked: "How did it happen?" Sylvan told her. Rose dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She was more shocked than grieved by all that she had heard. If her tyrant had been brought home dead, I think she would only have sighed "With the sigh of a great deliverance!" "Let us go now, Rose, and prepare his bed. Sylvan will stay hereto receive him," said Cora. The two women went up to the old man's room and turned down the bedclothes, and laid out a change of linen, and many towels in case they should be needed, and then went to the head of the stairs and waited and listened. Presently, through the open hall door, they heard the muffled tread and subdued tones of the men, who presently entered, bearing the stretcher on which was laid the huge form of the Iron King, covered, all except his face, with a white bed-spread. Slowly, carefully, and with some difficulty they bore him up the broad staircase head first--preceded by the family physician, Dr. Cummins, and followed by Messrs. Fabian and Clarence. Rose and Cora stood each side the open chamber door, and when the men bore the stretcher in and set it down on the floor, the two women approached and looked down on the injured man. His countenance was scarcely affected by his accident. He was no paler than usual. He was frowning--it might be from pain or it might be from anger--and he was glaring around. Rose was afraid to speak to him, prone on the stretcher as he was, lest she should get her head bitten off. Cora bent over him and said tenderly: "Dear grandfather, I am very sorry for this. I hope you are not hurt much." And she had her head immediately snapped off. "Don't be a confounded idiot!" he growled, hoarsely. "Go and send old black Martha here. She is worth a hundred of you two." Rose hurried off to obey this order, glad enough of an excuse to escape. And now the room was cleared of all the men except the family physician, the two sons, and the grandson. These approached the stretcher and carefully and tenderly undressed the patient and laid him on his bed. Then the physician made a more careful examination. There were no bones broken. The injuries seemed to be all internal; but of their seriousness or dangerousness the physician could not yet judge. The nervous shock had certainly been severe, and that in itself was a grave misfortune to a man of Aaron Rockharrt's age, and might have been instantaneously fatal to any one of less remarkable strength.