“I shall remember it all if I try,” he reflected. “My head is getting clearer. There was something I had to do! What on earth was it? Massey trusted me with something. If the Prince overpowered him I was to go--where? This agony makes all else a blank! I shall be no better than that daft vagabond who woke me last night. Ha! the despatches! I remember all now!” With intense anxiety he felt for them. They were bloodstained but safe, and exhausted with the effort of concealing them once more, he sank back in a dead faint. Now it chanced that on this Wednesday morning the Litany being ended, Dr. Coke and Hilary left the church and went to see Farmer Chadd, who was in great distress because his horses had been seized by the Canon Frome garrison. They were talking to him in the farmyard when his two little daughters came running up to beg his help. “There’s a horse, father, down by the brook,” they explained breathlessly, “and the wounded Puritan officer in the orchard asked us to fetch it, but it won’t let us come near.” “A Puritan officer? One of the fugitives from Ledbury, I reckon,” said Farmer Chadd. “He is wounded, do you say, child?” asked the Vicar. “Ay, sir,” said Nan, dropping a curtsey. “Wounded and well-nigh dead.” “I wish you would stable the horse and say naught about it in the village, Chadd, as likely as not the poor fellow will be haled to prison if the Canon Frome folk hear of this,” said Dr. Coke. “I’d do aught that would go against _them_” said the farmer, thinking wrathfully of the looting and plundering he had had to endure. “I will give help to the officer, then, and you will put up the horse,” said the Vicar. “Come, children, show us where this poor Puritan lies.” Hilary, with a horrible presentiment of coming sorrow, hastened across the orchard, and, with a low cry, knelt down on the grass beside the wounded man. “Uncle,” she said, looking up with wild eyes, “see who it is!” “Poor boy! poor boy!” said the Vicar, with deep concern. “What a change since yesterday, when he stood bold and strong at the head of his soldiers. He has swooned. Help me, dear, to remove his armour.” Hilary obeyed, and, giving the helmet to Nan and Meg, asked them to fetch water from the brook. The Vicar, who had some little knowledge of surgery, managed, for the time, to staunch the wounds, and, presently, feeling a woman’s soft fingers at his throat unfastening his gorget, Gabriel regained consciousness, and lay watching the sweet, grave face which bent over him. “Hilary!” he said, faintly. “Thank God! Now I can die in peace!” “No, no,” she said, smoothing back the hair from his forehead. “You must live, Gabriel, I--we--cannot spare you. Uncle Coke is half a leech, he will bind up your wounds.”