DINA.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE library being the quietest room on the ground floor, Calvert was taken to it. They laid him carefully on a sofa. He was still quite insensible, and it did not appear that anything could be done to relieve him until, at least, the arrival of the doctor. The girls continued, however, to keep his head cool by occasionally moistening it with a sponge dipped in vinegar and water.

Mr. Grange, who had met the procession in the avenue, felt Archer's pulse, and gravely expressed a hope that the stupor might gradually pass off. He helped to draw the sofa to the most convenient spot, and to adjust the cushions. Marian, who was proud of him at all times, almost forgot the patient for a moment in admiring the facility with which her massive, and not unfrequently boisterous father adapted his strength to the occasion. He moved Archer into the easiest position with the utmost gentleness, and was quite as tender in his uch as the girls themselves. When no

gmore could be done by him, he seated

impassive brow. Edith, on a chair at the other side, kept her fingers lightly upon the small and sinewy wrist; and the beat of her own pulse kept time with that she felt.

There was a small French clock over the fireplace. Its low tick was not usually noticed by any one in that room; now, however, its tick-tack, tick-tack fell so persistently on Edith's ear as frequently to put her out in her rather nervous attempts to count the pulse-beats, which held on ever at some different rate from the clock's tick.

The large bay window near which Mr. Grange sat looked on to the west lawn and shrubbery, and the sun, slanting in more and more as it declined, partially touched Edith's fair head with a gleam, softened by muslin curtains it shone through, and struck directly on the sparse yellow hair of the sleeper. Edith instinctively moved herself to intercept its rays, and then, wondering if they might not help to rouse him, drew back to her first attitude, and let the light glimmer on Archer's face and brighten the white edge of the scar which crossed his head.

The keen, arrowy eyes she knew so well were fast closed; the delicate features looked sharp, and the exquisitely cut lips had lost their usual brightness. Only a slight knitting of the brows indicated the pain which had doubtless preceded the insensibility.

Miss Lockart viewed the still face with sad anxiety, and, perhaps, noted with fond pitifulness the somewhat parched texture of its skin and the thinness of the cheeks. She traced, too, the course of the old scalp wound, and, it may be, thought of the horrors of war, and wondered, half dreamingly, which was greater, the

soldier's courage or that of the daring cragsman. Then she sighed, and faintly smiled while, perhaps, her thoughts wandered away from bloody fields and lowering crags, and, almost involuntarily, dwelt for a moment on a "sunny memory" of boyish mirth upon a daisysprinkled lawn.

Again, with tender care, her fingers closed upon the wrist, and the pulse-beats engrossed her attention. They were still less in unison with the clock ticks than before. Some change, slow but perceptible, was occurring, and an instinctive knowledge told her that the pulse was improving.

"I think he is-" she began in low and trembling. accents, breaking the stillness in the room for the first time during a quarter of an hour's silent watching.

"I saw a faint quiver in the lips à moment ago," said Marian, in a calmer, but not louder voice, after having waited a little that Edith might continue.

The Squire rose very softly and looked at Archer. One might have thought they were all in fear of awakening the sleeper, the opening of whose eyes they yet so longed for.

Mr. Grange gazed steadily a while on the white face, shook his head slightly, nodded as slightly, and then returned to his seat, still to wait.

By-and-by, he drew forth his large gold watchtaking as he did so especial care not to jingle the chain and old-fashioned bunch of seals--and compared its time with the clock's. The one marked four o'clock exactly, and immediately the silver chime of the other announced the same hour. He had, in fact, set his watch by the Castle time-gun (the wind being, as has been said, easterly) while descanting on Swedish tur

nips to Bracy Lushet; and his sister, Mrs. Beagle, ready to rustle to the lunch table, had done the same for the library timepiece.

The chime startled Miss Lockart, and made her for a while unable to count. Then something stirred behind her, and, looking round nervously, she saw the door slowly opening. Its motion towards her almost made her shrink, so strangely excited she felt, and then her heart gave a great bound as she suddenly thought, “It's the doctor." But it was only Polly Grange who entered. She came forward on tip-toe. Her hand was on her side, and she made suffocating efforts to hold her breath, lest her panting, for she had been running hard, should disobey the "Hush!" she saw expressed in every attitude before her.

"How is he?" she looked rather than said.

'Doing well, dear, we think," answered Marian, softly.

"Shall we be in the way?" asked Polly, again making a desperate attempt to whisper.

"Oh, no," said Marian, " only sit down, please."

Polly, however, did not sit down, but retreated out of the room, still on tip-toe. She left the door a little open, and her voice was presently audible speaking to some one in the hall. Then she came again, and slipping up to her sister, said, while her eyes, moist with tears, and yet gleaming from a sort of inner glow, rested on the sufferer,-if, indeed, the unconscious figure on the sofa could be called so,—

"Mr. Eagle fears to disturb you, as you wish to be so quiet, and he will wait in the dining-room till you bid him come. And don't you think, Marian, that I— or can I do anything here?"