Stephen opened his eyes once, as he was borne up toward the house and saw, in one sudden flash, the whole bright garden lying still and quiet in the hot sun. He saw his mother, white-cheeked and agonised, coming up the path behind him and still unconsciously clutching the great pistols in her apron. He wondered a little who was carrying him and, contriving to look upward, saw that it was Sergeant Branderby and that his red face, under its coat of sunburn, had turned to mottled grey. Then a sudden stab of pain went through him and all was black again. That cloud of darkness seemed to hang over him for weeks—or was it years? Sometimes it would lift and he would realise that he was in his own bed with his mother’s anxious face bending over him, would see the open lattice window with the red tendrils of woodbine clinging to its edge, or with the moon peeping in perhaps, for in his moments of awaking it would be sometimes day and sometimes night. Once he saw the Sergeant’s unhappy face at the door and was about to call to him to come in when the blackness fell again before he could find his voice. It was a queer darkness, full of pain and flashes of light and fantastic dreams that he could never remember. In the village of Hopewell there was never one person who could pass another without stopping to ask: “Have you heard aught that is new of little Stephen Sheffield?” The old doctor, when he left the big house and came out through the white gate could scarcely make his way along, so many there were who came running to him to gasp out: “Is he better? Oh, say that he is going to live.” To all their questions his only answer would be to purse his lips and shake his head doubtfully. “We can know nothing yet,” was all that he would ever say. King George of England would have scarcely liked to hear that in one small Puritan town his loyal subjects remembered the date of his coming to the throne only because it happened at the same season as “that dreadful mishap to Mistress Sheffield’s little son, Stephen.” In the history of Hopewell other boys had tumbled from trees, it was quite true, but never had one fallen who was so generally beloved or who lay so long in danger of his life. At last a day came when the doctor, stumping up the street, told fifty persons at least between the gate and the town square, that: “God has been good to us, the lad is going to live.” Whereupon the fifty ran with all speed to tell the good news to a hundred more. Rough old Sergeant Branderby came out of the gate, wiping the tears of joy from his eyes with the sleeve of his red coat and saying to every one, “Have you heard? Have you heard? I did not slay him after all!”