‘You see this——’ He hesitated for a word, and then said, ‘young lady; you will take her away at once. There is not a moment to be lost. Get her out of the house directly. I am going for a doctor. The Professor is seriously ill. Do you understand? You are to lose no time. You must take her away at once.’ Denis stared at him in the appallingly nonunderstanding way that belongs, I believe, to Irish servants alone. It doesn’t mean that they don’t understand; it only means that they are taking it all in, with a cleverness that few other servants can show at a moment’s notice. ‘An’ where, yer honour?’ ‘Anywhere out of this!’ This struck him as abominably unfeeling, and he added hastily: ‘To the safest place you know—the very safest. I depend upon you, Denis. Treat her as you would your own daughter.’ CHAPTER V. ‘For the shades are about us that hover When darkness is half withdrawn, And the skirts of the dead Night cover The face of the live new Dawn.’ The doctors when they came could do nothing for him. The Professor, though hardly an old man as the ordinary acceptation of the word goes, being still within the seventies, had so burnt out his candle at both ends that all the science in Europe could not have kept him alive for another twenty-four hours. A spice of gruesome mirth seemed to fall into the situation when their declaration was laid bare and one thought of the great discovery. Wyndham was the one who thought of it, and a wild longing to rouse the old man, who was now sunk into an oblivion that presaged death, and compel him even in his death-throes to reveal the secret that might bring even him back to life, seized upon him. But he felt it was impossible, and presently the two great men went downstairs to consult each other, and he was left alone with his dying friend. They had hardly gone when, watching as he incessantly did the face of the Professor, he noticed a change. He bent over him. ‘Why doesn’t she speak now,’ said the Professor. He was thinking of the girl’s voice—a voice that had taken him back to his early days in some strange way. ‘Master,’ said Wyndham—he, too, had gone back to the old days—‘you are thinking——’ ‘Of her. They said she was dead.’ ‘Who was dead?’ asked Wyndham. At this the old man roused. He had not known Wyndham’s voice the first time, but now he did, and he turned and looked at him; and presently consciousness once more grew within his eyes. ‘It is you, boy. And where is she?’ ‘She? The girl, you mean?’ ‘Yes.... I promised her. You remember.... It is late now, very late ... and I must sleep. But ... a word, boy.... I have left you all, and she ... out of it ... you must give her ... give her....’ He sank back. ‘All—all,’ said Wyndham eagerly.