Turk was the general who planned the return to the castle.  He insisted that Quentin, who was very weak, take Miss Garrison upon the horse’s back and ride, while he and Savage walked.  In this way they reached the gates of Craneycrow.  It was like the home-coming of loved ones who had been absent for years.  Three women were in tears, and all of the men were in smiles.  Quentin’s was the smile of one bordering on delirium, however.  A chill broke over him, and the fever in his body renewed its disputed sway.  An hour later he was in bed, and Turk, dispatched by Dorothy Garrison, was riding to the nearest town for a physician, much against the wishes of the sick man.  He stubbornly insisted that he would start with her for Brussels within twenty-four hours, and it was not until the doctor told him that he was in extreme danger of pneumonia that he consented to keep to his bed.

Resolutely he checked all desire to cry his love into the ear of the gentle nurse who sat with him for hours.  He would not grant himself the slightest deviation from the course he had sworn to follow, and he suffered more from restraint than from fever.  She found herself longing for the moment when he would call her to him and pour out the love that would not be denied.  He never spoke but she hoped for signs of surrender; he never looked at her that she did not expect his lips to utter the story his eyes were telling, What he endured in that week of fever, under the strain of love’s nursing, only he could have told—­and he told nothing.  How she hungered for the luxury of one word, only she knew—­and confessed unconsciously.

Had the doctor told her that he was critically ill, she would have cast all restraint aside and wrung from him the words he was holding back.  But the unromantic little doctor calmly broke the fever, subdued the congestion, relieved the cough and told them that the “young man would be quite well in a few days if he took good care of himself.”

The days of convalescence were few, for the vigorous strength of the patient had not been sapped to any great extent.  They were days of happiness, however, for all who lived in Castle Craneycrow.  Dickey and Lady Jane solemnly and somewhat defiantly approached Lord Bob on a very important matter.  He solemnly and discreetly gave his consent, and Dickey promised to be very, very good to her so long as he lived.  One day a real priest, Father Bivot, came to the castle gates to solicit alms for the poor of the neighborhood.  He was admitted, refreshed and made glad by a single donation that surpassed in size the combined contributions of a whole valley.  It was from him that they learned, with no little uneasiness of mind, that the body of Courant had been found, and that it had been identified by the Luxemburg authorities.  The cause of his death was a mystery that defied solution, however.

The news that Courant had been found and identified made Quentin all the more eager to carry out his design to restore Dorothy to her mother.  He knew, and all knew, that it was but a question of a few days until Ugo and the police would put two and two together and come racing into the valley, certain that Courant had been killed by the abductors of Dorothy Garrison.