All at once Ulick Doran opened his eyes. Where was he? His head was reeling round, but he grasped that above him was a watery, wintry sky, beneath him the hard, damp earth, behind his head something small! What? He turned his glance upwards, and beheld a pair of streaming hazel eyes, and a mop of rough red hair. Was it a fairy? For a moment he lay motionless, and wondered; then, as his senses gradually returned to him, he recollected the child on the ditch. Yes, he had come a tremendous cropper! Was the horse killed? He struggled to a sitting posture. No, the brute was all right, grazing away in the corner of the field. The effort cost him agony, and he realised that he was badly hurt; his shoulder seemed twisted, and altogether he felt sick and faint, and as if he had been recently passed under a steam-roller.
“Holy Mary be praised! And ye are not killed all out, Mr. Ulick?” piped a small voice, and the child rose to her feet.
“No. Do I look like it?” he answered cheerily.
“And ye got the better of him after all!”
“I’m not so sure of that. Anyhow, he has the best of it now”; and his eyes wandered to the hunter, who was cropping grass along a headland with the zest of a gourmand.
“Are ye much hurted?” she asked. Generally, when her mother “came to,” she was all right!
“My head feels a bit buzzy, and I believe I’ve put my shoulder out, and broken some bones.”
“What’s to be done?” she asked, wringing her little red hands. “What’s to be done at all? Shall I run up to the Castle?”
“No, it’s a good mile off, and I don’t fancy sitting here; and besides, I don’t want to frighten them.” He was talking to this bare headed imp as if she were a grown-up woman. “If I could get on the horse—I know there’s a lane hereabouts—I’d manage all right.”
He made a violent effort and rose to his feet, but quickly collapsed again. “I can’t walk, that’s sure”; and he looked over at the brown colt.