John Sands, with stiff politeness, helped Norah out of the train. She had hardly stepped on the platform, when they were met by Bat Bell, the miller, whose hard, dry features wore a graver expression than usual.
"Mr. Sands," he said, addressing himself to the clerk, with merely a nod of recognition to Norah, "as Ned Franks could not come here to-day, and I had business in town, Persis asked me to wait here and tell you"—the miller dropped his voice as he added the words—"about your wife."
Painful anxiety agitated the sallow face of John Sands; no news of her was likely to be good news. The clerk nervously clutched his umbrella; his pale lips moved, but they framed no question.
"She'd an accident last evening; fell into my pond,—no, no, not drowned; Ned Franks got her out; but her arm is badly hurt, and she's in the hospital here."
The clerk waited to hear no more; turning round, without uttering a word, he went off with long strides in the direction of the place where his wretched wife lay on her bed of pain.
"Her arm is smashed, has been taken off," said the miller to Norah; "but for your brave uncle, the poor, intoxicated wretch would have been torn limb from limb by my wheel."
"And he—oh, is he hurt?" cried the shuddering girl.
"He'd a narrow shave for his life," said the miller, "but he got off without even a scratch. He's a gallant fellow, is your uncle; but I say it was folly in him, a husband and father, to risk his life for a ranting vixen, who'll drink herself to death one of these days. But you'll come with me now, Norah Peele; my cart's waiting near here, and will carry you and your bundle; like a sensible girl, you don't sport much luggage, I see."
As the miller's cart rattled on its way, Bell went on with his talking, at every second sentence giving a cut with his whip to his horse; for the miller liked rapid motion, to "get on" being a ceaseless impulse with him.
"You'll find changes in Colme, Norah Peele. Misfortunes never come single; there was Nancy Sands struggling in the mill-pond yesterday, and to-day, Ben Stone the carpenter, as strong and hale a man as one could find in the county, is struck down, just as he had finished breakfast, with a kind of a fit. They say that something has given way within him, and that though he may live weeks or months, he'll not last to the end of the year. Now, there's a man who looked likely to see ninety; only a little too full-blooded perhaps," added the miller, who had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones.