Pale as death, his face plastered with dried blood--blood that had flowed from a contusion in his head--livid and helpless, his left arm hanging limp as an empty sleeve by his side, his eyes half closed, as if unable to endure the glare of the day after being so long in the dark, Allan was brought up, and, on beholding him, the exclamations of commiseration and astonishment redoubled; and yet it could be seen that he was almost past questioning, and mounted grooms were instantly despatched to summon all the medical aid of the district. Had the butler's nocturnal visit to his binns been twenty-four hours later, Allan Graham must have perished, and his fate might never have been known in his own generation perhaps. The whole catastrophe seemed so strange, unintelligible, unnatural, and harrowing that the nerves of Lady Aberfeldie were terribly shaken by it; so were those of her daughter and Olive, and each needed all the comfort and support the other could give. Some wine, which he drank thirstily, first revived the patient after he was conveyed to his room. 'How in the name of heaven, Allan, came you to fall into that place?' asked his father. 'I did not fall in,' replied Allan, in a species of husky whisper. 'How then?' 'Holcroft!' was all Allan could utter, when the room seemed to swim round him and he became insensible. Lord Aberfeldie knew not precisely what to make of the reply, but suspicion gave him a certain clue to what he thought had happened, and the same idea seemed to occur to young Angus, the gillie, who was assisting to undress his master and put him to bed, for his eyes gleamed under their shaggy brows, and he could only mutter from time to time, '_Cead mille maloch!_' A malediction in which Lord Aberfeldie heartily concurred. When ultimately the Peer learned all that had transpired, the incident of the cheque he had so innocently and generously given Holcroft was completely forgotten. He felt only rage, mingled with utter stupefaction, that a man could act so basely as his recent guest had done. It was altogether out of his calculation and experience of human life in every way. 'But what is to be done now--to search out and punish this malignant scoundrel?' he exclaimed; while Lady Aberfeldie, all her motherly feelings outraged, was for raising fire and sword, and letting loose all the terrors of the law on Holcroft's head. Lord Aberfeldie, however, after a time thought differently. He had a horror of publicity, of newspaper gossip and scandals, of making his honoured and ancestral home and the affairs of his family a _point d'appui_, as he said, for such things--a world's wonder, even for a time; and thus he declined to attempt to punish Holcroft for an outrage none had seen him commit. He would leave that to the course of events, and to Time, the avenger. More than all, the name of Olive Raymond might crop up in the unseemly matter.