They had just returned to the house when the physician’s voice was heard on the stairs talking to Madam Harford. Helena hastily retreated into the nearest room, but Humphrey, anxious to hear the latest report of his friend, lingered in the hall, and Madam Harford presented him to Sir Theodore Mayerne. “This is Mr. Neal, who helped my grandson in his escape from Oxford,” she said. “I wish the escape could have been made a couple of months sooner,” said the physician, glancing keenly at Humphrey. “The patient is worn out by want of food and air, and hath no strength left to fight this fever.” “They told me in the prison that he did well enough till the last six weeks,” said Humphrey, “and that it was nursing those that fell sick of the fever that were him out. He went by the name of ‘doctor’ among them, and they told me that he saved several lives.” “Brave fellow! I will do my utmost for him,” said the physician. “Let them try, madam, the remedies I have prescribed, and to-morrow I will see him again.” With that he bowed himself out, leaving Madam Harford grateful for such an unusual concession, yet knowing well that it pointed to the gravity of the crisis. All through the anxious days that followed, while Gabriel hung between life and death, subtle links were slowly forging themselves between the watchers at the Manor House. Instinctively they turned to those of their own generation for solace. Madam Harford found comfort in long confidential talks with Mistress Malvina, and Helena thought the only endurable hours of the day were those in which Humphrey Neal walked with her in the grounds. He was much in the sick room, but when released he invariably sought out little Mistress Nell, and with Lassie the retriever to act as duenna they would take a brisk walk, sometimes going to the village of Paddington, or visiting Kensington gravel pits, or now and then wandering as far as Hyde-park. During those days Helena heard of the quiet times before the war, when the old house at Chinnor had been one of the happiest homes in England, and Humphrey, the only son of the house, had thought of little but hawking and hunting and fishing. His father, like many another squire, had taken neither side in the great dispute of the day, both parties had seemed to him in the wrong, and, as he truly said, he had not the knowledge to fit him to make choice betwixt them. Helena heard now with indignation of Prince Rupert’s wanton cruelty in burning the entire village of Chinnor, and shed tears over Humphrey’s pitiful account of the way in which his parents both of them old and infirm, had been forced to fly from their burning house in the middle of the night. They had never recovered from the shock and from the ruin of the old family home. And Helena understood how much sadness was hidden beneath Humphrey’s cheerful manner, and knew that he assumed an air of light-hearted carelessness as a man dons a coat of mail in troubled times.