WHEN Vivian came to himself he was lying flat on his back on his bed upstairs, and some one was bathing his head with cold water, while Mary stood by the side of the bed holding a basin.

‘He is better now, mum,’ he heard her say; ‘he has opened his eyes, and the colour is coming back into his face.’

‘Poor little fellow!’ It was Aunt Dora who spoke. ‘I would not have thought that he was so easily upset. He must have been feeling ill all morning. I told him to stay in bed for his cold; but I suppose every one forgot to see after him, and he just got up like the others.’

‘I don’t think it was exactly that, mum,’ answered Mary; ‘for he ate a good breakfast, and seemed all right till some one began to talk about Monarch; and I think it was the shock when he heard that the poor brute had been poisoned that did it.’

At her words the whole hideous story, and the share he had unwittingly taken in it, flashed across Vivian’s mind. ‘Oh Aunt Dora!’ he cried, ‘I did not do it. I did not know that it would hurt him.’

Had his aunt been able to understand his words he would have confessed everything there and then, he felt so weak and miserable and broken-down; but she only looked at Mary in perplexity.

‘Do what?’ she asked in a puzzled way. ‘What is he thinking of, I wonder?’

‘About killing Monarch, I should say, mum,’ said Mary. ‘Mrs Mason said to me that he had been feeding the dog with some scraps while you were all at church; but of course that had nothing to do with the nasty bits of cake that poisoned him.—They must have been given to him at night, after it was dark, Master Vivian, when every one was safe in the house, and there was no one to see what was going on.’

‘Yes; it could not possibly be anything that you gave the poor dog that did him harm, dearie,’ said Aunt Dora, kissing him and laying a soft handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne on his brow. ‘They found a piece of strange-looking cake in his kennel which had evidently been put there by some strangers, and we expect there was poison in it. The police inspector is going to take it to a chemist and have it analysed. So don’t think about it any more, but lie still and try to have a little sleep, for I must go back to Isobel, and I hear your uncle calling for Mary downstairs.’

Mary gave a little gasp. She knew that the summons meant that she must go down and be questioned as to her movements yesterday, by the detective who had arrived just as she was carrying Vivian to his room. She had heard that in London the policemen and lawyers were so clever that they asked questions until they made people say the exact opposite to what they meant, and the prospect was very alarming to her simple country mind.

Her mistress saw her anxiety, and reassured her kindly.

‘Just tell the plain truth, Mary; tell him where you were, and what you did all yesterday; and remember no one here suspects you, but detectives always like to question every one in the house before they do anything else.’

Then they went outside, closing the door behind them, and Vivian was left to his own thoughts.

He saw the whole thing clearly now. The man with the green patch over his eye had evidently been prowling about, spying how the land lay, and seeing how he could best reach Monarch’s kennel and give the poor dog the poisonous cakes. When Vivian appeared he had hidden himself in the summer-house, in the hope of not being seen; and, while he was there, Vivian’s own foolishness in taking out the pistol and firing the fatal shot that shattered the windows had put him completely in his power; and the threats of exposure, and the cleverly contrived cock-and-bull story, which the little boy had believed implicitly, about the lame daughter at home and her fondness for puppies, had insured the cakes being given at the right moment.

He ground his teeth as he realised how completely he had been duped and made a fool of, and for a moment he almost wished that the detective downstairs would begin to question him, and draw out the whole story. But he knew that there was little chance of that. If the confession came, it must come from himself alone; and he turned his face on the pillow with a sob as he thought what a web of deceit, and lies, and wrongdoing he had woven round himself, for to confess to having seen the man, and to having slipped out in the darkness and given Monarch the cakes, would lead to awkward questions about the broken window, and to confess to having broken that would lead to the whole story of the pistol and its concealment.

No, he had not courage to face it all; he must go on living with the weight of these black sins on his conscience; and as he tossed restlessly up and down he wondered to himself if this was the way in which thieves and other wicked people began their lives of crime, and if he would go on getting worse and worse, until at last he became quite a wicked man who did not care what he did, and in due time would break his mother’s heart.

Presently Ronald came into the room, looking grave and anxious.

‘Why, Vivi, boy, what came over you?’ he asked, sitting down on the bed and putting his arm round his brother. ‘They tell me that you turned quite funny when you heard about Monarch, and Aunt Dora says that she can’t understand what put it into your head that you had hurt him. You only gave him some scraps of bread, didn’t you?’

There was something in Ronald’s voice as he asked this question which seemed to irritate his brother—a vague trace of anxiety, as if he would like to hear from Vivian’s own lips that this was all that he had had to do with the dog—for Vivian pushed away his arm roughly.

‘Of course it was all I gave him,’ he answered pettishly, ‘and I never thought they would do him any harm. I was confused and funny when I said that to Aunt Dora. Do go away, Ronald, my head aches so, and auntie said I was to be quiet.’

Ronald was silent for a moment, but there was a worried look on his face. There had been one or two things in his brother’s conduct that had puzzled him during the last few days, and he could not help remembering how he had noticed, the evening before, that Vivian’s house-shoes looked muddy, as if he had been outside with them, but clearly he was not in the mood for further questioning, so when he spoke again he wisely chose another subject.

‘Do you know, I think that Isobel is awfully ill, worse than we think,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen Aunt Dora at all; but I asked Anne, and she told me that Isobel woke auntie up quite early this morning by beginning to scream, and when auntie went into her room she didn’t know her in the least. They got the doctor at once, and he gave her some stuff that made her quieter, but she has never been properly awake, and he is coming back at ten o’clock. I’m wondering,’ he went on slowly, ‘if we shouldn’t tell Aunt Dora about that fall she had on Wednesday? I’ve heard of people hurting their heads when they fell like that.’

In a moment all Vivian’s fears of discovery were reawakened, and all his dreams of confession had vanished. If Isobel’s fall were spoken of, the oak-tree behind the summer-house might come to be examined, and the hole and its hidden contents would be almost sure to be discovered.

‘Oh Ronald, don’t be a fool!’ he said sharply, sitting up in bed in his excitement; ‘that can’t have anything to do with Isobel’s illness. She has been as well as possible since then, and it is no use bothering Aunt Dora about it now. You’re nothing but an old woman, always going and imagining things.’

Ronald’s face flushed at the taunt. Always conscientious, and almost morbidly afraid of telling an untruth, he was apt to be called ‘womanish’ and ‘silly’ by the Strangeways, who could not understand a boy who preferred to be laughed at or punished rather than get out of a scrape by shuffling or making an excuse. Their teasing had little effect on him; but when the taunt came from his own sharp little brother’s lips, whom he admired with an unselfish admiration which few elder boys would have accorded to a younger one, it hurt him deeply, but he stuck to his point.

‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I may either be an old woman or not; but I once heard father say that injuries to people’s heads don’t always show at first, that’s why doctors often don’t know what is the matter with people. So I think that Aunt Dora ought to know, and I’m going to tell her.’

‘Aunt Dora ought to know what?’ asked a voice, and Mrs Osbourne entered the room. ‘I hoped to find this boy asleep,’ she said, laying her hand on Vivian’s hot cheek, and here he is chattering away as fast as he can. What are you discussing, and what is it that you think I ought to know?’

‘It is about Isobel, Aunt Dora,’ said Ronald bravely. ‘Did you know that she had had a fall?’

‘A fall? When? here? Tell me quickly, Ronald.’ His aunt’s voice sounded so sharp and strained that even Ronald was frightened, and Vivian hid his face in the clothes and wondered what was going to happen next.

‘It was last Wednesday. We were playing hide-and-seek, and Vivi and Isobel climbed up on one of the branches of the old oak-tree behind the summer-house, and when Claude and I caught sight of them they began to crawl along the branch, and all at once it broke, and they both fell on to the path.’

‘And why was I not told this before?’ asked Aunt Dora in grave displeasure. ‘The others were younger; but I thought you were to be trusted, Ronald.’

The tears came into Ronald’s eyes, but he made no attempt to justify himself; that would have been to have blamed Ralph.

‘Isobel said she was not hurt, Aunt Dora,’ he said simply; ‘and though she looked a little bit white at first, she seemed all right in a moment.’

‘That did not matter. You should not have listened to her; you should have come straight to me.’ The words were spoken so passionately that Ronald was dumb; but Vivian spoke out loyally:

‘It wasn’t Ronald’s fault, auntie, whosever fault it was. He ran into the house to tell you, even although Isobel begged him not to, and Ralph laughed at him for making a fuss. But you were not in; you had gone to see that old lady, and you did not come back till tea-time, and then Isobel seemed all right, and we never thought any more about it till just now.’

Mrs Osbourne laid her hand quickly on her elder nephew’s shoulder. ‘Forgive me, my boy,’ she said; ‘but I am so anxious I hardly know what I am saying, and this only confirms what the doctor feared. He asked me if she had not had a fall, and of course I did not know. He is coming back at ten—there is his ring—and he talked—he talked—of her head and her back.’

The last words were spoken so low that they were scarcely audible; but as Mrs Osbourne hastily rose and left the room they heard her murmur to herself, ‘My little girl, my only little girl!’ and they gazed at one another in awe-struck silence.

‘Aunt Dora was crying,’ said Vivian at last. ‘She can’t think that Isobel is going to die, can she? Oh Ronald!’ he repeated, taking hold of his brother’s arm, and shaking it, as if to force an answer from him, ‘do say something; do say that she isn’t going to die.’

‘Oh, I hope it isn’t as bad as that,’ said Ronald, trying to speak cheerfully. ‘Lots of people get their heads hurt, and come all right afterwards; but, all the same, I wish we had told at the time. She might not have been so bad now.’

In a very few minutes the door opened again, and Aunt Dora came back, accompanied by an elderly gentleman, who glanced sharply at the two boys. Aunt Dora seemed quite herself again, although her voice trembled slightly.

‘This is Dr Robson, Vivian,’ she said, ‘and I want him just to see you for a moment, to make sure that you are all right after your faint turn in the morning; and then I want you both to try and remember exactly what happened on Wednesday, when the branch broke, and Isobel fell.’

The doctor felt Vivian’s pulse, and asked him a few questions. ‘He’s all right,’ he said, nodding briskly to Mrs Osbourne. ‘His nerves have got the better of him with the excitement of the robbery and all the turn-up in the house. Send him out for a good walk on the Heath; it will do his cold no harm, and he will come in looking like a different boy.

‘And now, my lad,’ he went on, turning to Ronald, ‘I want you to tell me exactly what happened last Wednesday, and how far little Miss Isobel fell, and what she looked like when she got up.’

‘I will tell you what I can, sir,’ replied Ronald; ‘but Vivian knows better than I do, for he was with her on the branch, and when she fell, he fell along with her. It took me a few minutes to get round to them, for of course they fell over on to the Heath, and I ran round by the lodge. Isobel was sitting on the branch then, and she said she was not hurt, but her face was so white I thought that she had broken her arm or something, and there was a queer look in her eyes as if she wasn’t seeing anything. I was frightened, and I ran in to see if I couldn’t find Aunt Dora; but she had gone out, and Isobel walked home herself, so I thought it was all right.’

The doctor listened to his story attentively, nodding his head once or twice when Ronald spoke of the curious look he had noticed in his little cousin’s eyes. Then he turned to Vivian.

‘When the branch broke, who was underneath?’ he asked; but Vivian could not answer this question.

‘I think we both fell together,’ he said; ‘only Isobel fell on her back and I fell on my face. I remember that because my hands were skinned, and she said she thought she had bumped the back of her head.’

‘Ah,’ said the doctor quickly, ‘did she say that at once?’

‘No,’ said Vivian; ‘at first she lay quite still, with her eyes half-open, and then she got up and said she wasn’t hurt, and then she got awfully white and sat down again, and said that about her head; then Ronald came, and we all went home.’

‘Did you run home?’

‘No, we didn’t. Claude and I wanted to run, but Isobel said she couldn’t, for her legs felt as if she were going to take pins and needles, and she had jumpy pains up her back.’

‘Thank you,’ said the doctor, rising. ‘You have told your story very clearly.’ Then he glanced at Aunt Dora and said gravely, ‘I am afraid that this explains a great deal.’