While talking, while reassuring, while frightening Helen with the terrible cold-bloodedness of a man used to death, the surgeon was binding up the wound in Karl's chest. "You say you fear that he has lost too much blood? How much blood can one lose without dying?" asked Helen. "It depends, madam." "What have I to fear or hope for?" asked Helen. "You have to hope that he will live to reach Frankfort, that he has not lost as much blood as I fear he has, and that a clever surgeon will tie up the artery. You have to fear that he will have a second hæmorrhage to-day, or in eight or ten days, when the wound is healed." "But we can save him, can't we?" "Nature has so many resources, that we must always hope, madam." "Well," said Helen, "do not let us lose an instant." Benedict and the surgeon took the torches, the two soldiers carried the wounded man to the bank. They laid him in the stern of the boat on a mattress and blanket fetched from Aschaffenburg. "May I try to rouse him?" asked Helen, "or ought I to leave him in his present state?" "Do not do anything to bring him back to consciousness, madam it is this which stops the hæmorrhage, and if the artery is tied before he wakes, all may be well." They all took their places in the boat, the two Prussians stood holding the torches; Helen was kneeling, the surgeon supported the wounded man; Benedict and Fritz rowed. Frisk, who did not seem to feel pride in having played such a splendid part, was sitting in the prow. This time, well ballasted, pulled by four arms, vigorous and accustomed to the exercise, the boat sped like a swallow over the surface of the water. Karl remained unconscious. The doctor had thought that the air, cooler on the water than on the land, would rouse him, but it did not. He remained motionless, and gave no sign of life. They arrived at Dettingen. Benedict gave a handsome reward to the two Prussian soldiers, and asked the surgeon, whom Helen could only thank by pressing his hands, to tell Frederic all the details of the expedition. Benedict called Lenhart, who was sleeping on the box of his carriage, and told him to go to Frankfort as fast as possible, and tell some porters to wait with a litter on the banks of the Main at Frankfort. As for him, with Helen and Earl, he continued his journey by water, that being the smoothest road that one can find for a sick man. Towards Hanau the sky began to get light; a great band of rosy silver stretched itself above the Bavarian mountains. It seemed to Helen that the wounded man shuddered. She gave a cry that made the two rowers turn, then without another movement, Karl opened his eyes, murmured the name of Helen, and closed them again. All this was so rapid, that if Fritz and Benedict had not seen it with her, she would have doubted it. That opened eye, that gently murmured word did not seem a return to life, but the dream of a dying man.