"You've come too late!" she sobbed. "Another man has taken your death on himself."
He reeled back against the wall. "Oh, God!" he said. "Oh, God, God, God!
Crailey!"
"Yes," she answered. "It's the poor vagabond that you loved so well."
Together they ran through the hall to the library. Crailey was lying on the long sofa, his eyes closed, his head like a piece of carven marble, the gay uniform, in which he had tricked himself out so gallantly, open at the throat, and his white linen stained with a few little splotches of red.
Beside him knelt Miss Betty, holding her lace handkerchief upon his breast; she was as white as he, and as motionless; so that, as she knelt there, immovable beside him, her arm like alabaster across his breast, they might have been a sculptor's group. The handkerchief was stained a little, like the linen, and like it, too, stained but a little. Nearby, on the floor, stood a flask of brandy and a pitcher of water.
"You!" Miss Betty's face showed no change, nor even a faint surprise, as her eyes fell upon Tom Vanrevel, but her lips soundlessly framed the word.
"You!"
Tom flung himself on his knees beside her.
"Crailey!" he cried, in a sharp voice that had a terrible shake in it.
"Crailey! Crailey, I want you to hear me!" He took one of the limp hands in his and began to chafe it, while Mrs. Tanberry grasped the other.
"There's still a movement in the pulse," she faltered. . .
"Still!" echoed Tom, roughly. "You're mad! You made me think Crailey was dead! Do you think Crailey Gray is going to die? He couldn't, I tell you--he couldn't; you don't know him! Who's gone for the doctor?" He dashed some brandy upon his handkerchief and set it to the white lips.
"Mamie. She was here in the room with me when it happened."
"`Happened'! `Happened'!" he mocked her, furiously. "`Happened' is a beautiful word!"
"God forgive me!" sobbed Mrs. Tanberry. " I was sitting in the library, and Mamie had just come from you, when we heard Mr. Carewe shout from the cupola room: `Stand away from my daughter, Vanrevel, and take this like a dog!' Only that;--and Mamie and I ran to the window, and we saw through the dusk a man in uniform leap back from Miss Betty--they were in that little open space near the hedge. He called out something and waved his hand, but the shot came at the same time, and he fell. Even then I was sure, in spite of what Mamie had said, I was as sure as Robert Carewe was, that it was you. He came and took one look--and saw--and then Nelson brought the horses and made him mount and go. Mamie ran for the doctor, and Betty and I carried Crailey in. It was hard work."
Miss Betty's hand had fallen from Crailey's breast where Tom's took its place. She rose unsteadily to her feet and pushed back the hair from her forehead, shivering convulsively as she looked down at the motionless figure on the sofa.
"Crailey!" said Tom, in the same angry, shaking voice. "Crailey, you've got to rouse yourself! This won't do; you've got to be a man! Crailey!"
He was trying to force the brandy through the tightly clenched teeth. "
Crailey! "
"Crailey!" whispered Miss Betty, leaning. heavily on the back of a chair.
"Crailey?" She looked at Mrs. Tanberry with vague interrogation, but Mrs.
Tanberry did not understand.
"Crailey!"
It was then that Crailey's eyelids fluttered and slowly opened; and his wandering glance, dull at first, slowly grew clear and twinkling as it rested on the ashy, stricken face of his best friend.
"Tom," he said, feebly, "it was worth the price, to wear your clothes just once!"
And then, at last, Miss Betty saw and understood. For not the honest gentleman, whom everyone except Robert Carewe held in esteem and af- fection, not her father's enemy, Vanrevel, lay before her with the death- wound in his breast for her sake, but that other--Crailey Gray, the ne'er- do-weel and light-o'-love, Crailey Gray, wit, poet, and scapegrace, the well-beloved town scamp.
He saw that she knew, and, as his brightening eyes wandered up to her, he smiled faintly. "Even a bad dog likes to have his day," he whispered.
