“Amos Bardwell!” exclaimed the doctor. “How happily we used to play together when we two were little eager lads and he was a big, kindly one. Do you mind how he taught us the game of ‘King William was King James’ Son’ and how you would never let us play it again after your friend the fat British Sergeant gave you the true history of King William and King James? Heard you ever what became of that doughty officer?”
“Sergeant Branderby?” said Stephen. “I fear that he perished the next year in the great Jacobite uprising, for I never heard news of him again. Do you remember his tales of the Low Countries to which we used to listen so breathlessly?”
The Doctor did not answer at once as he was still gazing at the picture.
“So this lad upstairs is Amos’ son!” he observed at last.
“His grandson, more likely,” Stephen answered, looking reflectively at the picture. “You forget, comrade, how time passes and that we were not boys yesterday. Amos’ only child was a daughter, of whom we lost all trace after he died, nor ever knew even whom she married. When I was in England, I went down to the little place in the country that was his home when he was not at sea: I saw his grave in the churchyard, but of his daughter I could get no news. The village people said only that she never came back there after her father’s death, but had, they thought, finally gone to dwell with some distant kindred in Scotland. One old woman had heard it rumoured that the girl had married one of these far-removed cousins, but she could not recollect the name.”
As they turned way from the picture, the Doctor said in a tone of misgiving:
“That boy upstairs seems a sturdy fellow, but my heart fails me concerning him, none the less. It will take skilled and faithful nursing to bring back to health a lad with one bullet lodged in his ribs and another gone through his knee. My man is with him now, but even he is not so good an attendant as is needed, while that old Frenchwoman who cared so well for you, Stephen, is now too old and prone to the losing of her wits. Who is to be the boy’s nurse I do not know.”
“Here is his nurse,” said a quiet voice in the doorway, and the two wheeled to see Clotilde standing there, gay and sweet as a flower after her long sleep and none the worse for her adventures.