* * * * *

The Major was leaning in the corner by the window, with his hands in his pockets, staring with a dull, white, defiant kind of face at the bed.  The lamp on the mantelpiece lighted him up clearly.  On his knees by the bedside was her husband, with his back to her, supporting a basin on the bed and some thing dark that hung over it.  Then she saw Frank.  It was he who was lying on the bed almost upon his face; one boot dangled down on this side, and it was his head that her husband was supporting.  She stared at it a moment in terror....  Then her eyes wandered to the floor, where, among the pieces of broken glass, a pool of dark liquid spread slowly over the boards.  Twigs and detached leaves of holly lay in the midst of it.  And at that sight her instinct reasserted herself.

She stepped forward and took her husband by the shoulder.  He turned a face that twitched a little towards her.  She pushed him aside, took the basin from him, and the young man’s head....

“Clear out of this,” she whispered sharply.  “Quick, mind!  You and the Major!...  Jimmie!” The boy was by her in an instant, shaking all over, but perfectly self-controlled.

“Jimmie, put your things on and be off to the clergy-house.  Ring ’em up, and ask for Mr. Carter.  Bring him round with you.”

Frank’s head slipped a little in her hands, and she half rose to steady it.  When she had finished and looked round again for her husband, the room was empty.  From below up the stairs came a sudden draught, and the flame leaped in the lamp-chimney.  And then, once more unrestrained, rose up the wailing of ’Erb.

(IV)

A little after dawn on that Christmas morning Mr. Parham-Carter sat solitary in the kitchen.  The children had been packed off to a neighbor’s house before, and he himself had been to and fro all night and was tired out—­to the priest’s house at Homerton, to the doctor’s, and to the parish nurse.  All the proper things had been done.  Frank had been anointed by the priest, bandaged by the doctor, and settled in by the nurse into the middle of the big double bed.  He had not yet recovered consciousness.  They were upstairs now—­Jack, Dick and the nurse; the priest and the doctor had promised to look in before nine—­there was nothing more that they could do for the present, they said—­and Mrs. Partington was out at this moment to fetch something from the dispensary.

He had heard her story during one of the intervals in the course of the night, and it seemed to him that he had a tolerably accurate theory of the whole affair—­if, that is to say, her interpretation of the noises she had heard was at all correct.