She laid her hand upon his forehead, to find that it was perfectly cool, and he caught her fingers in his as she was drawing them away. "Don't keep me in suspense," he said piteously. "Well, I will tell you. The police brought you here a fortnight ago. They found you lying in a doorway, drenched with water and fast asleep. You were quite delirious, and you have been very ill." "Ill? Yes, I feel so weak," he muttered, as he struggled to penetrate the mist which seemed to shut him in, till the nurse's next words gave him a clue to the way out. "We do not even know who you are; only that they suppose you to be a sailor who has just left his ship." "Heath--Mark Heath," he said quickly. "Ah! And your friends? We want to communicate with them." "My friends! No; it would frighten her, poor little girl!" "The cause for alarm is passed," said the nurse gravely. "Yes. Ah! I begin to recollect now," he said. "Send to Miss Heath--my sister--19 Upper Brunswick Avenue, Bloomsbury." "Yes; and now lie still." The nurse left him, and he lay thinking, and gradually finding in the mist the pieces of the puzzle of his past adventure, till he seemed to have them nearly all there. Then came the doctor with a few words of encouragement. "You'll do now," he said. "Narrow escape of losing your hair, young fellow. Next time you come from sea don't touch the drink." Mark Heath lay back thinking, and with the puzzle pretty well fitted together now all but what had happened since, half wild with exhaustion and excitement, he had taken refuge at Doctor Chartley's. "Don't touch the drink!" he muttered. "He thinks I have had D.T. Well, I did drink--brandy. I had some. Yes; I remember now--at the doctor's, and--Great Heavens!" He paused, with his hands pressed to his forehead; and now the light had come back clearly. He lay waiting till the nurse passed round again, and he signed to her to come to his side. "You have sent to my sister?" "Yes; a messenger has been sent." "My clothes?" he said, in an eager whisper. "Where are they?" "They have been taken care of quite safely." "And the bag, and the belt--the cash-belt I had strapped round my waist?" "I will make inquiries." The nurse went away, and Mark Heath lay in an agony of spirit which he could hardly control till her return, to announce that he had nothing whatever upon him in the way of bag or money when found by the police. Mark lay as if stunned till the messenger returned with the intelligence that Miss Heath had left the lodgings indicated; that the people there were new, and could give no information whatever. "But you have other friends," said the nurse, as she looked down pityingly in the patient's agitated face. "Yes," he said, "I have friends. Write for me to--" He paused for a few moments, with a hysterical sob rising to his lips as he recalled how he had struggled to return to her wealthy, and had come back a beggar. "Yes, to--"