She was very gentle and patient with me all the morning, and my poor soul brimmed over with gratitude. My pulses began even to flicker a little with hope that things might be as they were before the catastrophe. After all she was a very independent changeling and, if there existed in her heart any bias in my favor, Jason might find himself quite baffled in his efforts to control her inclinations. Presently I turned to the same overclouding subject. “What happened the day I was taken bad, Zyp?” “Jason found you on the stairs, talking rubbish. They carried you to bed and you hardly left off talking rubbish for weeks. Don’t you remember anything of it?” “Nothing, after--after I saw him lying there so dreadful.” “Ah, it was ugly, wasn’t it? Well, you must have wandered off somewhere--anywhere; and the rest of us to the parlor. There dad and the doctor fell to words. They had spent all the night over that stupid drink, sleeping and quarreling by fits and couldn’t remember much about it. They had not heard any noise upstairs, either of them; but suddenly the doctor pointed to something hanging out of dad’s pocket. ‘Why, you must have gone to the boy’s room some time,’ he said. ‘Look there!’ Dad took it out and it was Modred’s braces, all twisted up and stuffed into his pocket.” “Modred’s braces?” “Yes; they all knew them, for they were blue, you know--the color he liked. Dad afterward thought he must have put them there to be out of the way while he was carrying Modred upstairs, but at the time he was furious. ‘D’ye dare to imply I had a hand in my son’s death?’ he shrieked. ‘I imply nothing; I mean no offense; they are plain for every one to see,’ said the doctor, going back a little. I thought he was frightened and that dad would jump at his throat like a weasel, and I clapped my hands, waiting for the battle. But it never came, for dad turned pale and called for brandy, and there was an end of it.” This story of the doctor’s horrible suggestion wrought only one comfort in me--it warmed my heart with a great heat of loyalty to one who, I knew, for all his faults, could never be guilty of so inhuman a wickedness. “I should like to kill that doctor,” I said, fiercely and proudly. “So should I,” said Zyp. “I believe he would bleed soot like a chimney.” Zyp was my companion during the greater part of that day and the next. Her manner toward me was uniformly gentle and attentive. Sometimes during meals I would become conscious of Jason’s eyes fixed upon one or other of us in a curious stare that was watchful and introspective at once, as if he were summing up the voiceless arguments of counsels invisible, while never losing sight of the fact that we he sat in judgment on were already convicted in his mind. This, for the time being, did not much disturb me. I was lulled to a sense of false security by the gracious championship I thought I now could rely upon.