 the cold draught, and the bed itself, with a chair
beside it, looked neat, clean, and comfortable. Philip himself was
cheery; he said the bullet had made a mere flesh-wound, and had passed
out on the other side, and the Lady of Hope, as they called he, was just
such another as Aunt Cecily, and had made him very comfortable, with
clean linen, good cool drinks, and the tenderest hand. But he was very
sleepy, so sleepy that he hardly cared to hear of the combat, only he
roused himself for a moment to say, 'Brother, I have seen Dolly.'

'Dolly!'

'Our sister Dolly.'

'Ah, Phil! many a strange visitor has come to me in the Walnut Chamber
at home.'

'I tell you I was in my perfect senses,' returned Philip; 'there she
was, just as when we left her. And, what was stranger still, she talked
French.'

'Sleep and see her again,' laughed Berenger.




CHAPTER XLII. THE SILVER BULLET



    I am all wonder, O my son, my soul
    Is stunned within me; powers to speak to him
    Or to interrogate him have I none,
    Or even to look on him.
                    --Cowper's ODYSSEY


In his waking senses Philip adhered to his story that his little sister
Dolly had stood at the foot of his bed, called him '_le pauvre_' and
had afterwards disappeared, led away by the nursing lady. It seemed to
Berenger a mere delusion of feverish weakness; for Philip had lost a
great deal of blood, and the wound, though not dangerous, permitted no
attempt at moving, and gave much pain. Of the perfections of the lady as
nurse and surgeon Philip could not say enough, and, pale and overwept as
he allowed her to be, he declared that he was sure that her beauty must
equal Mme. De Selinville's. Berenger laughed, and looking round this
strange hospital, now lighted by the full rays of the morning sun, he
was much struck by the scene.

It was the chancel of the old abbey church. The door by which they
had entered was very small, and perhaps had led merely to the abbot's
throne, as an irregularity for his own convenience, and only made
manifest by the rendi