“Advance! . . . Hallo there! Stop!”
He looked up quickly to see McKinstry stagger and then fall heavily to the ground.
With an exclamation of horror, the first and only terrible emotion he had felt, he ran to the fallen man, as Harrison reached his side at the same moment.
“For God's sake,” he said wildly, throwing himself on his knees beside McKinstry, “what has happened? For I swear to you, I never aimed at you! I fired in the air. Speak! Tell him, you,” he turned with a despairing appeal to Harrison, “you must have seen it all—tell him it was not me!”
A half wondering, half incredulous smile passed quickly over Harrison's face. “In course you didn't MEAN it,” he said dryly, “but let that slide. Get up and get away from yer, while you kin,” he added impatiently, with a significant glance at one or two men who lingered after the sudden and general dispersion of the crowd at McKinstry's fall. “Get—will ye!”
“Never!” said the young man passionately, “until he knows that it was not my hand that fired that shot.”
McKinstry painfully struggled to his elbow. “It took me yere,” he said with a slow deliberation, as if answering some previous question, and pointing to his hip, “and it kinder let me down when I started forward at the second call.”
“But it was not I who did it, McKinstry, I swear it. Hear me! For God's sake, say you believe me.”
McKinstry turned his drowsy troubled eyes upon the master as if he were vaguely recalling something. “Stand back thar a minit, will ye,” he said to Harrison, with a languid wave of his crippled hand; “I want ter speak to this yer man.”
Harrison drew back a few paces and the master sought to take the wounded man's hand, but he was stopped by a gesture. “Where hev you put Cressy?” McKinstry said slowly.