“Have you blankets?” Lawrence asked, trying not to show what he was suffering, and still quite unable to stand alone. George took in the situation at a glance, seeing him in shirtsleeves and the deadly pallor on his face. “The young lady won’t hurt for a minute or two,” he said with sudden sharpness to the others. “Come and help me chafe the master’s limbs,” and he almost lifted Lawrence bodily, laying him down on a blanket and setting to work with a will, after first giving him some brandy. After a little while the pain gave and the colour came back to his lips, but meanwhile Paddy had awakened, and, without making any sound, sat watching. She knew instinctively what had happened, and she would not for worlds have attracted any attention to herself until Lawrence was better, his drawn face and blue lips going straight to her heart. After a little, with George’s help, Lawrence managed to get to his feet and stand upright, and then he turned at once to Paddy. “Give me the flask,” he said, and the others waited while he poured out some brandy and held it to her lips. Then he seemed quite himself again, and prepared to start for home, arranging everything, and, as usual, compelling acquiescence. Paddy wanted to try and walk, but he would not hear of it, and finally she had to get into the litter he contrived for her with blankets and be carried down the steep and dangerous slope. At three in the morning the sound of footsteps at last fell on the straining ears at Mourne Lodge, and Mrs Blake hastened wildly to the door, her composure fast giving way. “Lawrence!” she called out into the night. “Lawrence!” And only a mother could have spoken the name so. “We’re all right, mother,” came back the answer cheerily; but as he came up, overcome at last, Mrs Blake fainted into his arms. CHAPTER XXXVII “Stay here with me.” Paddy lay on the drawing-room sofa at the Parsonage and watched the birds skimming over the loch with a strained, anxious expression in her usually laughing eyes. Her aunts had fetched her from Mourne Lodge that morning, and there had been a great scene of general weeping and embracing and exclaiming. The news had somehow got all round the neighbourhood in an incredibly short time, and when Miss Mary was watching casually for Paddy to come home on her bicycle about eleven, there came instead a boy with the news that she and Lawrence had been lost in the fog all night and carried home in the morning. Instantly there was great consternation in the Parsonage, and the small boy sent flying off for the one conveyance available in Omeath, in which, immediately afterward, the two sisters set out for Mourne Lodge. They found Paddy still a little dazed and shaken, but otherwise none the worse for her adventure. “Lawrence saved me,” she said as soon as they gave her time to speak. “If it had not been for him, I should probably have died of cold. He risked his life for me.”