The next moment a noise of altercation filled the air. I could hear the shrill speech of our worthy landlady, and above it a man's voice in the English dialect, growing ever louder and louder as though the violence of his tone would translate his meaning. I followed Larke to the window. The quiet street was alive with peeping faces, and just beneath us stood the reason of the brawl, a short, thick-set man, whose face was hidden by a large flapping hat. His horse stood in the roadway in a lather of spume. For some reason, doubtless the excitement of his manner, our hostess would not let him pass into the house. She stood solidly filling the doorway, and for a little it amused us to watch the man's vehement gesticulations; so little thought had we of the many strange events which were to follow from his visit. In a minute, however, he turned his face towards us, and I recognised him as Nicholas Swasfield, the body-servant of my good friend, Sir Julian Harnwood. "Let him up!" I cried. "Let him up!" "Yes, woman, let him up!" repeated Larke, and turning to me: "He hath many choice and wonderful oaths, and I fain would add them to my store." Thereupon the woman drew reluctantly aside, and Swasfield bounded past her into the passage. We heard him tumble heavily up the dark stairway, cursing the country and its natives, and then with a great bump of his body he burst open the door and lurched into the room. At the sight of me he brake into a glad cry: "Sir Julian, my master," he gasped, and stopped dead. "Well, what of him?" I asked eagerly. But he answered never a word; he stood mopping his brows with a great blue handkerchief, which hid his face from us. 'Tis strange how clearly I remember that handkerchief. It was embroidered at the corners with anchors in white cotton, and it recurred to me with a quaint irrelevancy that the man had been a sailor in his youth. "Well, what of him?" I asked again with some sharpness. "Speak, man! You had words and to spare below." "He lies in Bristol gaol," at last he said, heaving great breaths between his words, "and none but you can serve his turn." With that he tore at his shirt above his heart, and made a little tripping run to the table. He clutched at its edge and swayed forward above it, his head loosely swinging between his shoulders. "Hurry!" he said in a thick, strangled voice. "Assizes--twenty-first--Jeffries." And with a sudden convulsion he straightened himself, stood for a second on the tips of his toes, with the veins ridged on his livid face like purple weals, and then fell in a huddled lump upon the floor. I sprang to the stair-head and shouted for some one to run for a doctor. Jack was already loosening the man's shirt. "It is a fit," he said, clasping a hand to his heart.