It was Petheridge Jukesbury, then, who stalked into Mrs. Haggage's apartments and appropriated her mattress as the first at hand, and afterward waddled through the gardens bearing it on his fat shoulders, and still later lifted Billy upon it as gently as a woman could have. But it was the hatless Colonel on his favourite Black Bess ("Damn your motor-cars!" the Colonel was wont to say; "I consider my appearance sufficiently unprepossessing already, sir, without my arriving in Heaven in fragments and stinking of gasoline!") who in Fairhaven town, some quarter of an hour afterward, leaped Dr. Jeal's garden fence, and subsequently bundled the doctor into his gig; and again yet later it was the Colonel who stood fuming upon the terrace with Dr. Jeal on his way to Selwoode indeed, but still some four miles from the mansion toward which he was urging his staid horse at its liveliest gait. Kennaston tried to soothe him. But the Colonel clamoured to the heavens. Kennaston he qualified in various ways. And as for Dr. Jeal, he would hold him responsible--"personally, sir"--for the consequences of his dawdling in this fashion--"Damme, sir, like a damn' snail with a wooden leg!" "I am afraid," said Kennaston, gravely, "that the doctor will be of very little use when he does arrive." There was that in his face which made the Colonel pause in his objurgations. "Sir," said the Colonel, "what--do--you--mean?" He found articulation somewhat difficult. "In your absence," Kennaston answered, "Mr. Jukesbury, who it appears knows something of medicine, has subjected Mr. Woods to an examination. It--it would be unkind to deceive you----" "Come to the point, sir," the Colonel interrupted him. "What--do you--mean?" "I mean," said Felix Kennaston, sadly, "that--he is afraid--Mr. Woods will never recover consciousness." Colonel Hugonin stared at him. The skin of his flabby, wrinkled old throat was working convulsively. Then, "You're wrong, sir," the Colonel said. "Billy _shan't_ die. Damn Jukesbury! Damn all doctors, too, sir! I put my trust in my God, sir, and not in a box of damn' sugar-pills, sir. And I tell you, sir, _that boy is not going to die_." Afterward he turned and went into Selwoode defiantly. XXVIII In the living-hall the Colonel found Margaret, white as paper, with purple lips that timidly smiled at him. "Why ain't you in bed?" the old gentleman demanded, with as great an affectation of sternness as he could muster. To say the truth, it was not much; for Colonel Hugonin, for all his blustering optimism, was sadly shaken now.