I shuddered to think of the poor young fellow lying ill at Castle Angry. Why, Sir Rupert or James Gaskin might kill him in one of their orgies. There was something helpless and appealing in my memory of the quiet young face that went to my heart. "I shall keep my counsel," I said aloud, as I have a habit of doing. "I may be right or wrong, but it seems to me that no harm can lie in silence." So not even to Esther did I whisper my suspicions; but I was surprised at the density of everybody except myself. Even the boys, who told us first that Sir Rupert's grandson had come home, exhausted their conjectures about the stranger's identity, and never once stumbled near the truth. CHAPTER VIII. THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATE. The young man had been many days under our roof, and we knew no more of him than at the first; yet the mystery but deepened our interest in him. A handsome, fashionably dressed young man, and a fine bay horse, do not disappear out of the world every day with not a soul apparently to seek after them, or inquire of their fate. We discussed the matter at every meal. We were so much interested, indeed, that we kept more to the house than of old; and the boys had pleasure and exercise enough in cantering the stranger's horse up and down the long avenue; for the fine spirited brute soon grew hot-blooded in the stable, and he would have kicked the crazy stalls to pieces if his spirits had not had some vent. One or other of us was always stealing in on tiptoe to the high, light room, where Oona sat sewing, her face looking very important in the shadow of her huge frilled cap. "How is he now, Oona?" we would ask, and Oona would answer, "No better and no worse"; and then, with a glance at the rigid young face on the pillows, we would steal out again. But the third day I found Esther sitting, in a familiar attitude of hers, on the rug at Oona's feet, with an open book on her knee, and her eyes gazing into the heart of the fire. Esther had been very silent while we gabbled about the young stranger's identity; she was never one to talk much. Yet I could see that she listened eagerly for the doctor's verdict every morning when he would come tramping down to Aline's room after visiting his patient. She did not seem quite the old Esther in those days. She had an absent manner, which no one seemed to notice but myself, and she looked a little pale, and had dark rings about her eyes, as if she did not sleep well at night. On the sixth day the young man began to come back to life again. So Esther told us when she came gliding into her place at the breakfast-table. She had spoken to Oona outside the door, and Oona had told her. She looked glad and excited, and I felt that pity for the young stranger had been troubling her of late more than the rest of us.