"Is he so bad then?" said Bertie, speaking with effort.

"He is very bad indeed," the doctor answered. "The operation has been a protracted one. If he lives, it will be a success. But there is great weakness of the heart's action. Any moment may be the last. Dr. Capper will not leave him at present. Your brother is there too." He paused a moment. "Your brother is a wonderful man," he said, with the air of a man bestowing praise against his will. "If you will be good enough to order some refreshment I will take it in. On no account is Mr. Errol's servant to go near."

Slowly the hours of a day that seemed endless dragged away. Bertie went home to his wife in the afternoon, taking Tawny Hudson, subdued and wretched, with him.

In the evening he returned, the man still following him like a pariah dog, to find the situation unaltered. Capper and Nap were still with Lucas, whose life hung by a thread.

Bertie decided to remain for the night, and at a late hour he saw Capper for a moment. The great man's face was drawn and haggard.

"He won't last through the night," he said. "Tell the ladies to be in readiness. I will send for them if there is time."

"No hope whatever?" said Bertie.

Capper shook his head. "I fear--none. He is just running down--sinking. I think you had better not come in, but stay within call."

He was gone again, and Bertie was left to give his message, and then to wait in anguish of spirit for the final call.

The night was still. Only the draught from the wide-flung doors and windows stirred through the quiet rooms. Mrs. Errol and Anne shared Bertie's vigil in the room that opened out of that in which Lucas Errol was making his last stand. Humbly, in a corner, huddled Tawny Hudson, rocking himself, but making no sound.

Within the room Capper sat at the foot of the bed, motionless, alert as a sentry. A nurse stood like a statue, holding back the bellying window-curtain. And on his knees beside the bed, the inert wrists gripped close in his sinewy fingers, was Nap.

The light of a shaded lamp shone upon his dusky face, showing the gleam of his watchful eyes, the crude lines of jaw and cheek-bone. He looked like a figure carved in bronze.

For hours he had knelt so in unceasing vigilance, gazing unblinking and tireless at the exhausted face upon the pillow. It might have been the face of a dead man upon which he gazed, but the pulses that fluttered in his hold told him otherwise. Lucas still held feebly, feebly, to his chain.

It was nearly an hour after midnight that a voice spoke in the utter silence.

"Boney!"

"I'm here, old chap."

"Good-bye, dear fellow!" It was scarcely more than a whisper. It seemed to come from closed lips.

"Open your eyes," said Nap.

Slowly the heavy lids opened. The blue eyes met the deep, mysterious gaze focussed upon them.

Silent as a ghost Capper glided forward. The nurse left the window, and the curtain floated out into the room, fluttering like an imprisoned thing seeking to escape.

"Ah, but, Boney--" the tired voice said, as though in protest.

And Nap's voice, thrilled through and through with a tenderness that was more than human, made answer. "Just a little longer, dear old man! Only a little longer! See! I'm holding you up. Turn up the lamp, doctor. Take off the shade. He can't see me. There, old chap! Look at me now. Grip hold of me. You can't go yet. I'm with you. I'm holding you back."

Capper trickled something out of a spoon between the pale lips, and for a little there was silence.

But the blue eyes remained wide, fixed upon those other fiery eyes that held them by some mysterious magic from falling into sightlessness.

Three figures had come in through the open door, moving wraith-like, silently. The room seemed full of shadows.

After a while Lucas spoke again, and this time his lips moved perceptibly. "It's such a long way back, Boney,--no end of a trail--and all up hill."

The flare of the lamp was full upon Nap's face; it threw the harsh lines into strong relief, and it seemed to Anne, watching, that she looked upon the face of a man in extremity. His voice too--was that Nap's voice pleading so desperately?

"Don't be faint-hearted, old chap! I'll haul you up. It won't be so tough presently. You're through the worst already. Hold on, Luke, hold on!"

Again Capper poured something between the parted lips, and a quiver ran through the powerless body.

"Hold on!" Nap repeated. "You promised you would. You mustn't go yet, old boy. You can't be spared. I shall go to the devil without you."

"Not you, Boney!" Lucas's lips quivered into a smile. "That's all over,"

he said. "You're playing--the straight game--now."

"You must stay and see it through," said Nap. "I can't win out without you."

"Ah!" A long sigh came pantingly with the word. "That so, Boney? Guess I'm--a selfish brute--always was--always was."

A choked sob came through the stillness. Bertie suddenly covered his face. Mrs. Errol put her arm round him as one who comforted a child.

"Is that--someone--crying?" gasped Lucas.

"It's that a.s.s Bertie," answered Nap, without stirring so much as an eyelid.

"Bertie? Poor old chap! Tell him he mustn't. Tell him--I'll hang on--a little longer--G.o.d willing; but only a little longer, Boney, only--a little--longer."

There was pleading in the voice, the pleading of a man unutterably tired and longing to be at rest.

Anne, standing apart, was cut to the heart with the pathos of it. But Nap did not seem to feel it. He knelt on, inflexible, determined, all his iron will, all his fiery vitality, concentrated upon holding a man in life. It was not all magnetism, it was not all strength of purpose, it was his whole being grappling, striving, compelling, till inch by inch he gained a desperate victory.

In the morning the fight was over. In the morning Lucas Errol had turned, reluctantly as it seemed to Anne, from the Gate of Death.

And while he lay sleeping quietly, the spring air, pure and life-giving, blowing across his face, the man who had brought him back rose up from his bedside, crept with a noiseless, swaying motion from the room, and sank senseless on the further side of the door.

CHAPTER XV

THE KING'S DECREE

For three weeks after the operation Capper said nothing good or bad of his patient's condition, and during those weeks he scarcely went beyond the terrace. He moved about like a man absorbed, and it seemed to Anne whenever they met that he looked at her without seeing her.

Nap was even closer in his attendance, and Tawny Hudson found himself more than ever supplanted and ignored. For night and day he was at hand, sleeping when and how he could, always alert at the briefest notice, always ready with unfailing nerve and steady hand.

And Capper suffered him without the smallest remonstrance. He seemed to take it for granted that Nap's powers were illimitable.

"That young man will kill himself," Dr. Randal said once. "He is living at perpetual high pressure."

"Leave him alone," growled Capper. "He is the force that drives the engine. The wheels won't go round without him."