A dense crowd was gathered before the door of a small two-storied house, into which the doctor now disappeared; and I, mixing with the mass, tried as best I might, to ask how the wounded man was doing, and what hopes there were of his life. While I thus went from one to another vainly endeavoring to make my question intelligible, I heard a loud voice cry out in German, “Where is the young fellow who says he knows him?” “Here,” cried I, boldly. “I believe I know him,--I am almost sure I do.” “Come to the door, then, and look in; do not utter a word,” cried a tall dark man I soon knew to be Count Hunyadi. “Mind, sir, for your life's sake, that you don't disturb him.” I crept on tiptoe to the slightly opened door, and looked in. There, on a mattress on the floor, a tall man was lying, while the doctor knelt beside him, and seemed to press with all his weight on his thigh. The sick man slowly turned his face to the light, and it was my father! My knees trembled, my sight grew dim; strength suddenly forsook me, and I fell powerless and senseless to the ground. They were bathing my face and temples with vinegar and water to rally me when the doctor came to say the sick man desired to see me. In a moment the blood rushed to my head, and I cried out, “I am ready.” “Be calm, sir. A mere word, a gesture, may prove fatal to him,” whispered the doctor to me. “His life hangs on a thread.” Count Hunyadi was kneeling beside my father, and evidently trying to catch some faint words he was saying, as I stole forward and knelt down by the bedside. My father turned his eyes slowly round till they fell upon me,--when their expression suddenly changed from the look of weary apathy to a stare of full and steadfast meaning,--intense, indeed, in significance; but I dare not say that this conveyed anything like love or affection for me. “Come closer,” cried he, in a hoarse whisper. “It is Digby, is it not? This boy is my son, Hunyadi,” he said, with an increased effort. “Give me your hand.” He took my trembling fingers in his cold moist hand, and passed the large signet ring over my second finger. “He is my heir. Gentlemen,” he cried, in a tone at once haughty and broken by debility, “my name, my title, my fortune all pas» to _him_. By to-morrow you will call him Sir Digby--” He could not finish; his lips moved without a sound. I was conscious of no more than being drawn heavily across the floor, not utterly bereft of reason, but dulled and stunned as if from the effect of a heavy blow. When I was able, I crept back to the room. It was now the decline of day. A large white cavalry cloak covered the body. I knelt down beside it, and cried with a bursting heart till late into the night. CHAPTER XXXI. IN SORROW