He was in a high fever and wandering when slung on board, turning angrily upon those who had helped him.

"Don't I tell you the poor lass is burning?" he cried. "This is your doing, skipper," he moaned. "You were always against it, and now you leave the poor lass to burn, and keep me here. Father, this is the boy I watched over and brought up, and taught. This be the way he treats me now I am in trouble."

It was with great difficulty that they could keep the poor old fellow sufficiently quiet to enable them to perform the necessary bandaging, but at last he sank into the heavy sleep of exhaustion; and Gil, having satisfied himself that his injured men were cared for, saw to his own burns, gave orders for the ship to be floated up to her old berth on the next tide, and then returned to the Pool.

For the next seven days he was almost constantly at Roehurst, in company with the stricken father, whom affliction seemed to have turned back to him as his only friend; and together they hung about the ruins, which still smouldered slightly, and crumbled more and more into a shapeless heap, overhung by a few masses of tottering wall.

Gil would have tried to persuade the old man to leave the spot, but that it had so terrible a fascination for him as well, and together they would sit hour after hour gazing at the ruins, and rebuilding the place mentally and occupying it as of old.

The people of the sparsely inhabited district came to gaze at the wreck, and from far and near they gathered together two days after the fire, to see Gil's men carry the flower-sprinkled bier from Croftly's house to the little rustic churchyard two miles away, the men taking it in turns to bear her, four and four about. The place was densely crowded, thinly populated as was the country there, to see Gil Carr and the weak, broken founder, who seemed to have aged in one night to a venerable old man, walk hand in hand behind, and stand bareheaded while Master Peasegood read, and sobbed, and read, and finally letting fall his book, went down upon his knees in the soft earth, and prayed beside the grave.

Sir Mark chafed more and more, but it was in vain. He was to have been chief actor in another scene; here he was completely set aside again, and Gil Carr had resumed his place.

Fortunately for Sir Mark, his old acquaintance Sir Thomas Beckley came forward to offer his hospitality, and he took up his abode with him, feeling that he could not leave the place with his task undone, and in a bitter mood he received the attempts at consolation offered to him by Anne, who, however, always kept very much aloof, playing the part of the injured woman, but promising herself a sharp revenge, if ever the King's messenger should again lay siege unto her heart.

Up to the day of the funeral the founder had been almost childish from the effects of the shock; but after that he seemed to have recovered himself, though he looked aged and bent, and changed to a remarkable degree.

"I was very hard upon you, Gil," he said to him one evening, as they stood leaning against one of the posts that had helped to support the swing bridge now completely swept away, and whose place was occupied by a couple of stout planks laid across the race. "I was very hard upon you, my lad, but, though I made that affair of Abel Churr's an excuse, I don't think I believed at heart that you did away with the poor wandering wretch."

Gil looked at him sadly, and bowed his head without speaking.

"What are you going to do now, my lad?" continued the founder, gazing at him with a yearning look as one his lost child had loved.

"To do?" said Gil, in a low hopeless tone, "to do? What is there left to do, sir, but die?"

"Hush, my lad," said the founder, laying a trembling hand upon the young man's arm; "that is for me to say. I am old and stricken: the storm has torn one great branch from the trunk, and the old tree will slowly wither and die. You are young yet, and hope will come to you again as time goes on."

"Hush, for God's sake, hush!" cried Gil, turning upon him almost fiercely; then, gazing round him in the gathering gloom of the evening, he let himself sink, upon his knees lower and lower, with his hands covering his face, as for the first time in the solitude of that blasted home he gave full vent to the pent-up agony that for days and days he had striven to hide.

"Hope," he groaned, "hope?" as his broad shoulders heaved and the despairing sobs tore their way from his weary breast. "He does not know what she was to me--he cannot tell how I loved her. Mace, Mace, my darling, would to God I were lying by thy side!"

It had grown quite dark now, and the founder sank upon his knees in the black ashes to lay his hands upon the young man's head.

"Gil, my son," he whispered hoarsely, "forgive me, for I never knew your heart till now. In her name I ask you to forgive me for the wrong I would have done you both in tearing you apart. I thought I was doing right, but I am punished for my fault."

"Forgive you!" groaned Gil, who, for the first time in his life, was quite unmanned. "Yes, I forgive you, if there is aught to forgive."

He pressed the old man's hand, as he rose after a time, weak and desolate, to sit down upon one of the stones cast from the main building by the blast. Some distance away a couple of windows shed their feeble light, as if they were signals to Mace to open her casement once again, and a groan rose to Gil's lips as he thought of the past. Then, like a wandering spirit, a white, filmy-looking owl swept by them, turned and came back once more, as if attracted by the blackened ruins, glided to and fro for a few minutes, and it seemed to the two men that it shrieked faintly just over the very centre of the ruined house before it glided away.

Gil sat watching the bird in a dreamy, hopeless way, and, as he gazed through the darkness, he felt that the place would become the home of such creatures.

He was aroused from his reverie by the founder.

"How did it happen, Gil?" he said.

He spoke in a low, hoarse voice, but his Words sounded very plain in the silence of the autumn even.

"How did it happen?" said Gil, repeating his words.

"Yes, my boy, tell me all. I cannot believe that God would make that old woman with her curses his instrument to punish me."

"I have little to tell," said Gil. "I saw our darling again and again, begging that she would go with me; but she refused till she found it hopeless to move you, and that the wedding was to be."

"Yes, yes--go on," groaned the founder.

"Then she consented, and I made my plans."

"Yes, I see," replied the founder, "you were there with your men, and Sir Mark felt sure that you were coming. But yours was a mad revenge on him, and meant ruin and destruction to all."

"I do not understand you," said Gil, quietly.

"Did you think by blowing down part of the place to get her away in the confusion?"

"Blow down? The place?" said Gil. "We had not a charge of powder with us. I left it all on board."

"Then it was the store below caught first," said the founder, musingly; "but how--how?"

"I cannot tell," said Gil.

"Wat Kilby," exclaimed the founder, jumping at a cause for the terrible disaster; "he was smoking his tobacco by the entry, and must have thrown down the burning pipe."

"Nay, he did not smoke; he was by my side bearing a ladder."

"Are you speaking frankly to me, Gil?" said the founder. "I prithee keep nothing back."

"Can you speak to me like that?" replied Gil, in a grave, reproachful tone. "Master Cobbe, I have kept nothing back; I have added nothing to my story; I have only left out that there was the priest awaiting on board of my ship, to be our darling's companion until we were made man and wife."

"Forgive me, Gil," said the founder. "I know now that you are keeping nothing back. But how could it have happened?"

"A shot from one of Sir Mark's men's pieces must have gone through to your store of powder," said Gil. "They did fire, but my men struck their pieces aside."

The founder accepted this theory, and they sat in silence for a few moments, till they were interrupted by the approach of a great, dark figure, who seemed at last to make them out.

"Ah! friend Cobbe," it said, in the thick rich tones of Master Peasegood, "I was seeking thee. Come; the night-dew is falling, and it is time you were safely housed. Ah! Gil, my good lad, you here?"

"Yes," was the curt response. "Master Peasegood, hadst thou but done thy duty by her who was thy charge, these troubles might not have been."

"Reproach me not, good lad, I was taken away through Sir Mark's scurvy tricks and carried up to London. And there I was, day after day, half prisoner, half free. Sometimes they'd let me fly a little bit, like a bird with a string at its leg. Other times they'd keep me in, and never a word could I get to know of my offence."

"Not a legal prisoner, then?"

"Nay, lad, not at all. Though, had I tried to flee I had been tied fast enough, I'll warrant. I took advantage of my freedom to see Saint Paul's, and should be sorry to preach there. I bought me though, as I had my money with me and the chance was good, six yards of cloth in Paul's churchyard to make me a goodly cloak--four pounds sixteen it cost me--and seven yards of calamanko for a cassock; one pound four and sixpence that, besides a pound for a new hat, and six shillings for a lutestring hood for Mistress Hilberry. I lightened my pocket, Gil, but I was heavy enough at heart."

Gil nodded.

"I grew so hot of blood and angry at last with the way they kept me in, and the too free use I made of the most villainous ale, Master Cobbe, I ever put to my lips, that had I not been blooded freely by a chirurgeon, I should have been ill. It was not the proper time--the haemeroyal time, though close upon the full, but I let him take a good ten ounces from my veins, and felt a better man."

"It would have been better, Master Peasegood, had you been here."