Leaving the wounded man to the kindly offices of Mrs. Durdle and Hilary, both of them well skilled in sick-nursing, the Vicar hastened back to his house, returning before long with a box full of pre-historic bones under one arm and a flagon of Hollands under the other. “If anyone chances to ask you why we come to and fro to this tower, Zachary,” he remarked, toiling up the ladder and setting down his burden, “you can tell them I am keeping my antiquities here, and can say you’ve seen them. What! hath Captain Harford not yet regained his senses? Try to get a little of this down his throat, Hilary. That’s better; he will soon revive, and I will then set off for Hereford.” The last word seemed to reach Gabriel. He opened his eyes for a moment and caught a misty glimpse of Dr. Coke and Hilary with a rough stone tower wall and a deeply splayed narrow window in the background. Was he once more a prisoner in St. George’s Tower at Oxford? The horror of the thought roused him. Then he noticed that he was lying in a bed on the floor, and that they had removed his buff coat, a perception which vaguely troubled him. .. “My coat?” he said, anxiously, yet still not knowing why he wanted it. “Are you cold,” said Hilary, spreading another blanket over him. But the Vicar understood, and fetched the buff coat from the corner where Durdle had thrown it. “The inner pocket is here,” he said, placing it within reach of Gabriel’s right hand. And then, with a look of relief, the wounded man drew out the despatches. “Will you give them to my father?” he said, pleadingly, “Yes,” replied the Vicar; “but I shall beg him to come here first and dress your wounds. Will you give them to him yourself?” “He may not come in time,” said Gabriel, faintly. And the Vicar, seeing that he longed to have the anxiety off his mind thrust the despatches into his black doublet, and bidding them keep the tower door locked, set off with Zachary to the stable, where the old servant saddled the cob for him, and, promising to be about the premises ready to give Mrs. Durdle help should she need him, watched his master ride off in the direction of Hereford. Dr. Coke was not a man to shirk anything which he had promised, but he could not help feeling that in this despatchbearing he had undertaken work which he would have preferred to leave alone. To stand quite aloof from the strife and never to forget that he was before all things pledged to the service of the Prince of Peace had been his aim throughout the Civil War; but to refuse the request of one who lay apparently at the point of death, seemed to him impossible, while Gabriel’s gallant rescue of Hilary increased the desire he felt to give him whatever ease of mind was possible. On reaching Hereford he rode straight to the physician’s house and, learnt from the servant that her master was about to ride out into the country. However, he was shown into the study.