Tom Bowles was lifted tenderly by four of the stoutest men present and borne into his home, evincing no sign of consciousness; but his face, where not clouted with blood, was very pale, very calm, with a slight froth at the lips.
Kenelm pulled down his shirt-sleeves, put on his coat, and turned to Jessie,—
“Now, my young friend, show me Will’s cottage.”
The girl came to him, white and trembling. She did not dare to speak. The stranger had become a new man in her eyes. Perhaps he frightened her as much as Tom Bowles had done. But she quickened her pace, leaving the public-house behind till she came to the farther end of the village. Kenelm walked beside her, muttering to himself: and though Jessie caught his words, happily she did not understand; for they repeated one of those bitter reproaches on her sex as the main cause of all strife, bloodshed, and mischief in general, with which the classic authors abound. His spleen soothed by that recourse to the lessons of the ancients, Kenelm turned at last to his silent companion, and said kindly but gravely,—
“Mr. Bowles has given me his promise, and it is fair that I should now ask a promise from you. It is this: just consider how easily a girl so pretty as you can be the cause of a man’s death. Had Bowles struck me where I struck him I should have been past the help of a surgeon.”
“Oh!” groaned Jessie, shuddering, and covering her face with both hands.
“And, putting aside that danger, consider that a man may be hit mortally on the heart as well as on the head, and that a woman has much to answer for who, no matter what her excuse, forgets what misery and what guilt can be inflicted by a word from her lip and a glance from her eye. Consider this, and promise that, whether you marry Will Somers or not, you will never again give a man fair cause to think you can like him unless your own heart tells you that you can. Will you promise that?”
“I will, indeed,—indeed.” Poor Jessie’s voice died in sobs.
“There, my child, I don’t ask you not to cry, because I know how much women like crying; and in this instance it does you a great deal of good. But we are just at the end of the village; which is Will’s cottage?”
Jessie lifted her head, and pointed to a solitary, small thatched cottage.