“There was no one ever thought that the fall was through fault of yours,” old dame Allen told him, “and though we loved you little when you came and liked your errand less, we have learned to put up with you for the love you have shown our Stephen. Ay, he will live, it is not so easy to down the Radpath blood!” Stephen himself, propped up in the four-post bed among the big pillows and covered over with the precious blue and white quilt that had been part of Mistress Radpath’s dowry, felt himself to be a very great person indeed. He was a very pale and thin Stephen, whose knees doubled up when he tried to stand, but whose voice and merry laugh sounded quite the same. “I know how ill I must have been, since you give me the Orange-Tree quilt,” he said to Alisoun, “but I do not care ever to earn such an honour again. When can I get up and play in the garden, mother?” “Very soon now, I hope,” she answered, “but we must go carefully and do all that the good doctor says.” It was Sergeant Branderby, pale, aghast and trembling, who had carried Stephen up to his room upon that terrible day; it was the same stout soldier, beaming and jubilant, who bore him downstairs the first morning that he was able to leave his bed. Established in a great armchair on the columned verandah, Stephen held court among his youthful friends, who came running down the lane from the farthest ends of the town at the news, “Stephen Sheffield is out again.” After they had all gone home the boy leaned back in his chair and looked up at his good friend the Sergeant, who had never left his side through all the coming and going. “I had forgotten,” Stephen sighed, as he looked out over the garden, “that leaves could be so green or sun could shine so bright. And I feel so well that surely by to-morrow I can run down the path and see what time it is by the sundial.” “Not just to-morrow, I fear,” objected Branderby. Then, seeing the boy’s face clouded with disappointment, he added, “Suppose I come in a day or two and carry you down yonder to the harbour’s edge, where you can sit all day on the warm sand and watch the full blue tide come in.” “Ah, that will be famous,” exclaimed Stephen, “and then perhaps the day after that I can run in the garden again. It tries my patience sorely to be still so long!” The morning after this brought Stephen another visitor, a long looked-for and most welcome one. During the night a big ship slipped into the harbour and early next day a brown-faced, smiling man came striding up the path and knocked at the door. Mistress Sheffield, who opened it, flung two joyful arms about his neck crying: “Amos Bardwell, but it is good to see you, lad!”