There they fell to chafing his hands and sprinkling
water in his face, a crowd of the others gathering about. Blunt was
hidden from Myles by those who stood around, and the lad listened to the
broken talk that filled the room with its confusion, his anxiety growing
keener as he became cooler. But at last, with a heartfelt joy, he
gathered from the confused buzz of words that the other lad had opened
his eyes and, after a while, he saw him sit up, leaning his head upon
the shoulder of one of his fellow-bachelors, white and faint and sick as
death.
"Thank Heaven that thou didst not kill him!" said Edmund Wilkes, who
had been standing with the crowd looking on at the efforts of Blunt's
friends to revive him, and who had now come and sat down upon the bed
not far from Myles.
"Aye," said Myles, gruffly, "I do thank Heaven for that."
CHAPTER 14
If Myles fancied that one single victory over his enemy would cure the
evil against which he fought, he was grievously mistaken; wrongs are not
righted so easily as that. It was only the beginning. Other and far more
bitter battles lay before him ere he could look around him and say, "I
have won the victory."
For a day--for two days--the bachelors were demoralized at the fall of
their leader, and the Knights of the Rose were proportionately uplifted.
The day that Blunt met his fall, the wooden tank in which the water
had been poured every morning was found to have been taken away.
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