"Ha--ha--ha--ha--ha!" roared Salis, laughing in the most undignified manner, and then raising his eyes to encounter the fierce gaze of his friend. "What are you laughing at?" cried North angrily. "At Tom Candlish--the noble Sir Thomas! It's comic, now that I know there is no danger. Why, Horace, old fellow, don't you know how it happened?" North paused as he stared wildly at Leo's brother. "Don't I know how it happened?" he faltered. "It's over some love affair, and the scoundrel has been caught." "What?" "Yes; that's it," cried Salis joyously. "I don't know for certain, and this is confoundedly unclerical, but it's glorious. The brute! Some father or brother or lover has caught him, and thrashed him within an inch of his life. My dear Horace, I don't know when I've felt so pleased." The doctor's face was a study of perplexity in its most condensed form. The injury to his head had tended to confuse him, so that he could not think clearly according to his wont, and he felt a longing to explain everything to, and confide in, his old friend; but he could not speak, for how could he tell him that his sister had been so base? It must come from another, or Salis must find it out for himself; he could not speak. "I've talked to the fellow before," continued the curate. "I've preached to him; I've preached at him; and all the time I've felt like a bee upon the back of a rhinoceros, hard at work blunting my sting. Stick, sir, stick is the only remedy for an ill like that of Squire Tom, and, by George! Horace, he has had a tremendous dose." "Yes," said North, whose conscience felt more at ease now that he had satisfied himself as to the young man's state. "Did you see his eyes?" cried Salis, laughing again; "swollen up till they look like slits; and won't they be a glorious colour, too--eh, Horace, old fellow! There, don't bully me for saying it, but you know what used to trouble me. How I should like Leo to have her disenchantment completed. I should have liked her to see the miserable brute as he is--battered and flushed with brandy." North started violently. "There, there, I ought not to have said it, but I'm speaking of my own sister, and of something of the past which you know all about. How can girls be such idiots?" North did not speak, but walked swiftly on beside his friend, who, repenting of what he had said, and feeling that it had been in execrable taste, hastened to change the subject, so as to place the doctor at ease. "Did you hear this morning's news?" he said. "News?" said North, turning sharply. "No; of course you could not, being ill in bed, where you'd better go again. Burglary, my boy. We're getting on." "Burglary?" "Yes: sacrilegious burglary, sir. One of those King's Hampton rascals-- one of May's lambs--broke into the vestry last night."