"Yes; but he won't get over it. A bad subject--a very bad subject. He is very prostrate," the surgeon continued, laying a professional finger on the great muscular wrist; "his hours are numbered. That's a bad blow on your forehead, sir; let me put a bandage on; and how are you getting home?" "As I came, I suppose. There seems a lull in the uproar now, and I shall be able to get back by Trinity Street and up by Brandon Hill." Gilbert submitted to the bandage, and thankfully drank a reviving draught, which the surgeon gave him, and then he turned his face homewards. He was dizzy and bewildered, and did not feel as if he could again face the crowd, so he reached home by a circuitous road, entering Great George Street from the upper end. It was nearly one o'clock before he stood by his own door, and he found two of his friends, who had served with him as special constables, coming out. They had left Queen's Square empty, they said, and not a rioter was to be seen there, and the troops had returned to their quarters. Joyce, hearing her husband's voice, came downstairs, and not a moment too soon. Thoroughly exhausted, and suffering from the blow on his head, he would have fallen, had not his two friends caught him and carried him, at Joyce's request, to his own room. Gilbert tried to make light of his condition, and said it was only the noise and shouting which had bewildered him. "We lost sight of you after the troops cleared Queen's Square, Arundel. What became of you?" "I got separated in the rush just by Wine Street, and there a woman and a baby were in some danger; and as I made a plunge to get them to a place of safety, someone gave me a chance thump on the head, and I might have been trampled to death had not a man saved me, in his turn to be cut down by the sabre of one of the soldiers; he now lies dying in the Infirmary; and the man, Joyce, is Bob Priday." "He kept his promise, then." Joyce said, clasping her hands; "he kept his promise to me." "Yes, darling, it was the touch of your little, white hand, he said, which brought to his heart the hope that God would forgive him." Joyce, kneeling by the sofa where her husband lay, hid her face in the pillow, while Mr. Bengough and Mr. Cooper, his two friends, left the room with Mrs. Arundel, and promised to send a surgeon who lived near them in Berkley Square. "He is as brave as a lion," Mr. Bengough said; "you may well be proud of your son." The doctor came, and advised entire rest and quiet, and told Joyce that she might console herself with the certainty that her husband would be unfit for any action, as special constable for many a day to come. How thankful Joyce felt that she had not left the house with her children, and that she was there to nurse and tend her husband with the thousand sweet observances which are the consolation of every true wife to render, in the hour of need.