Jacquelin had never recovered from the rough handling which he had received that night from Leech. His wound had broken out afresh and he was now confined to his bed all the time. There was one cause which, perhaps, more than all the rest, weighed him down, and that, certainly, Dr. Cary did not know, though, no doubt, Mrs. Cary and Mrs. Gray knew. It was a secret wound, deeper than that which Dr. Cary was treating. He had never been the same since the evening of his misunderstanding with Blair Cary. The affair in which the negro soldiers were killed, and Rupert’s and Steve’s part in it, with the necessity of sending Rupert away, and the consequences which followed, seemed to be the finishing stroke, and it appeared to be only a question of a few months with Jacquelin. One other reason for his anxiety Dr. Cary had. Reports of threats made by Leech came to the Doctor. “Another arrest, and he will go,” said Dr. Cary. “We must get him away. Send him first to a city where he can have better surgical treatment than he is able to receive in the country. Then, when he is fit for it, put him on a sailing vessel and send him around the world.” How cleverly he had managed it, thought the Doctor! Mrs. Gray also had her own reasons for wishing to get Jacquelin away, though they were not mainly what Dr. Cary thought. With a keener insight than the good Doctor had, she had seen Blair Cary’s change and its effect on Jacquelin. And she eagerly sought to carry out the Doctor’s suggestions. The chief difficulty in the way was want of funds. The demands of the plantation, according to Mr. Still’s account, had been enough of late to consume everything that was made on it. The negroes had to be supported whether they worked or not, and the estate was running behind. The Doctor felt certain he could manage the matter of means. Hiram Still had just offered to lend him a further sum. Indeed, Still had himself brought up the matter of Jacquelin’s health, and had even asked the Doctor if he did not think a long visit somewhere might do Jacquelin good. “He is a strange mixture, that man Still. He is undoubtedly a very kind-hearted man,” asserted the Doctor. Mrs. Gray did not altogether agree with her cousin in his estimate of Still; she had her own opinion of him; but she was somewhat mollified by hearing of his interest in Jacquelin’s welfare. She could not, however, allow her cousin to borrow money in his own name on her account, but, in the face of Jacquelin’s steady decline, she finally yielded and bowed her pride so far as to permit the Doctor to borrow it for her, only stipulating that the plate and pictures in the house should be pledged to secure it. This would relieve her partly from personal obligations to Still. One other stipulation she made: that Jacquelin was not to know of the loan.