“That’s it!” cried Lady Marcia, delighted.  “Of course that’s it.  It’s like a rough fruit that mellows.  Anyway I’m not going to damn him for good at twenty-three, like Winifred.  Well, Sir Arthur was very badly thrown, coming home from hunting, six years ago now and more, when Douglas was seventeen.  It was in the Christmas holidays.  They had had a run over Leman Moor and Sir Arthur and Douglas got separated from the rest, and were coming home in the dark through some very lonely roads—­or tracks—­on the edge of the moor.  They came to a place where the track went suddenly into a wood, and a pheasant was startled by the horses, and flew right across Sir Arthur, almost in his face.  The horse—­it was always said no one but Sir Arthur Falloden could ride it—­took fright, bolted, dashed in among the trees, threw Sir Arthur, and made off.  When Douglas came up he found his father on the ground, covered with blood, and insensible.  There was no one anywhere near.  The boy shouted—­no one came.  It was getting dark and pouring with rain—­an awful January night—­I remember it well!  Douglas tried to lift his father on his own horse, but the horse got restive, and it couldn’t be done.  If he had ridden back to a farm about a mile away he could have got help.  But he thought his father was dying, and he couldn’t make up his mind, you see, to leave him.  Then—­imagine!—­he somehow was able—­of course he was even then a splendid young fellow, immensely tall and strong for his age—­to get Sir Arthur on his back, and to carry him through two fields to a place where he thought there was a cottage.  But when he got there, the cottage was empty—­no lights—­and the door padlocked.  He laid his father down under the shelter of the cottage, and called and shouted.  Not a sign of help!  It was awfully cold—­a bitter north wind—­blowing great gusts of rain.  Nobody knows quite how long they were there, but at last they were found by the vicar of the village near, who was coming home on his bicycle from visiting a sick woman at the farm.  He told me that Douglas had taken off his own coat and a knitted waistcoat he wore, and had wrapped his father in them.  He was sitting on the ground with his back to the cottage wall, holding Sir Arthur in his arms.  The boy himself was weak with cold and misery.  The vicar said he should never forget his white face, when he found them with his lamp, and the light shone on them.  Douglas was bending over his father, imploring him to speak to him—­in the tenderest, sweetest way.  Then, of course, when the vicar, Mr. Burton, had got a cart and taken them to the farm, and a carriage had come from Flood with two doctors, and Sir Arthur had begun to recover his senses, Douglas—­looking like a ghost—­was very soon ordering everybody about in his usual lordly manner.  ‘He slanged the farmer,’ said Mr. Burton, ’for being slow with the cart; he sent me off on errands as though I’d been his groom; and when the doctors came, you’d have thought he was more in charge of the