Julia had seen two men carrying a trestle with a tarpauling over it, and a third walking beside. Dodd's heavy sea-chest had been more than once carried home this way. She met the men at the door, and overpowered them with questions:-- “Is it his clothes? Then he wasn't so much wrecked after all. Is he with you? Is he coming directly? Why don't you tell me?” The porters at first wore the stolid impassive faces of their tribe; but when this bright young creature questioned them, brimming over with ardour and joy, their countenances fell and they hung their heads. The little sharp-faced man, who was walking beside the others stepped forward to reply to Julia. He was interrupted by a terrible scream from the balcony. Mrs. Dodd was leaning wildly over it, with dilating eyes and quivering hand, that pointed down to the other side of the trestle: “Julia!! Julia!!” Julia ran round, and stood petrified, her pale lips apart, and all her innocent joy frozen in a moment. The tarpauling was scanty there, and a man's hand and part of his arm dangled helpless out. The hand was blanched, and wore a well-known ring. CHAPTER XXI IN the terror and confusion no questions were then asked: Alfred got to David's head, and told Skinner to take his feet; Mrs. Dodd helped, and they carried him up and laid him on her bed. The servant girls cried and wailed, and were of little use: Mrs. Dodd hurried them off for medical aid, and she and Julia, though pale as ghosts, and trembling in every limb, were tearless and almost silent, and did all for the best. They undid a shirt button that confined his throat: they set his head high, and tried their poor little eau-de-Cologne and feminine remedies; and each of them held an insensible hand in both hers, clasping it piteously and trying to hold him tight, so that Death should not take him away from them. “My son, where is my son?” sighed Mrs. Dodd. Alfred threw his arm round her neck: “You have one son here: what shall I do?” The next minute he was running to the telegraph office for her. At the gate he found Skinner hanging about, and asked him hurriedly how the calamity had happened. Skinner said Captain Dodd had fallen down senseless in the street, and he had passed soon after, recognised him, and brought him home: “I have paid the men, sir; I wouldn't let them ask the ladies at such a time.” “Oh, thank you! thank you, Skinner! I will repay you; it is me you have obliged.” And Alfred ran off with the words in his mouth. Skinner looked after him and muttered: “I forgot _him._ It is a nice mess. Wish I was out of it.” And he went back, hanging his head, to Alfred's father. Mr. Osmond met him. Skinner turned and saw him enter the villa. Mr. Osmond came softly into the room, examined Dodd's eye, felt his pulse, and said he must be bled at once.