She unwound the kerchief from her neck, and making me sit on the stile, bound up my knee skillfully, twisting a short stick in the bandage to stop the bleeding.
I thank’d her, and we hurried on into the depths of the wood, treading silently on the deep carpet of pine needles. The ground rose steeply all the way: and all the way, tho’ the light grew feebler, the roar and outcries in the valley follow’d us.
Toward the hill’s summit the trees were sparser. Looking upward, I saw that the sky had grown thickly overcast. We cross’d the ridge, and after a minute or so were in thick cover again.
’Twas here that Sir Deakin’s strength gave out. Almost without warning, he sank down between our hands, and in a second was taken with that hateful cough, that once already this night had frightened me for his life.
“Ah, ah!” he groaned, between the spasms, “I’m not fit—I’m not fit for it!” and was taken again, and roll’d about barking, so that I fear’d the sound would bring all Settle’s gang on our heels. “I’m not fit for it!” he repeated, as the cough left him, and he lay back helpless, among the pine needles.
Now, I understood his words to bear on his unfitness for death, and judg’d them very decent and properly spoken: and took occasion to hint this in my attempts to console him.
“Why, bless the boy!” he cried, sitting up and staring, “for what d’ye think I’m unsuited?”
“Why, to die, sir—to be sure!”
“Holy Mother!” he regarded me with surprise, contempt and pity, all together: “was ever such a dunderhead! If ever man were fit to die, I am he—and that’s just my reasonable complaint. Heart alive! ’tis unfit to live I am, tied to this absurd body!”
I suppose my attitude express’d my lack of comprehension, for he lifted a finger and went on—