Mr. Chester bent over the prostrate man silently, and looked at him for an instant. Then he dropped to his knees, loosened the victim’s waistcoat and listened at his breast. The boys stood watching him with bated breath.
“One of you go and get some cold water,” he said, abruptly, looking up.
Dick was off like a flash, thankful, doubtless, for the chance to do something—and glad, too, perhaps, to escape from Mr. Chester’s accusing eyes.
“Now, help me straighten him out here, sir,” he said to his son, and in a moment they had Mr. Tunstall extended flat on his back. I shuddered as I looked at him, he seemed so limp and cold and lifeless.
Then Mr. Chester bent over him again and began to compress his ribs and allow them to expand, as I had read of doing for drowned persons. He chafed his hands and slapped them smartly and seemed to be pummelling him generally, but the gathering darkness prevented me from seeing very clearly. Dick soon came back with the water, with which Mr. Chester bathed the unconscious man’s face and neck. I had forgotten my fatigue in the stress of the moment’s emotion, and instinctively had joined the two boys, who were kneeling beside their victim, peering down at his flaccid, bloodless countenance, in a very agony of apprehension.
The chafing and rubbing and bathing seemingly produced no effect, and as minute followed minute and no sign of life appeared, the fear that it had altogether fled deepened to certainty. The boys looked already like convicted murderers, and I could not help pitying them, in spite of the way they had treated me. Somehow my hand stole into Tom’s, and I was shocked to feel how cold and clammy it was. He felt the pressure of my fingers, and smiled at me wanly, and leaned over and whispered, “I’m sorry, Biffkins;” and thereupon all the anger I had felt against him melted quite away.
At last, Mr. Chester, despairing of gentler methods, caught up a double handful of water and dashed it violently into the unconscious face. For an instant, there was no response, then the eyelids slowly lifted and a deep sigh proceeded from the half-open mouth. A moment more, and, rubbing his eyes confusedly, he sat up and looked about him.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded, anxiously. “Where am I?”
The difference of tone and accent from those he had used with me only a few minutes before fairly startled me. He had dropped his drawl, his nasal tone, his slip-shod enunciation. And his face had changed, too. It was thinner and more alert; and the ragged whiskers seemed absurdly out of place upon it.
“You’ve had a fainting-spell,” answered Mr. Chester, gently. “You will soon be all right again, I hope.”