“He was,” replied the other. “He thinks, too, he fired the shot that did it; but, poor fellow! he was down before that. The boys brought him off. That child is going fast,” continued he, as his eye fell upon me.
“Look to him, then, and don't be losin' time,” said Darby, fiercely. “Look to him,” he added more mildly, and “the Heavens will bless ye! Here 's twenty goolden guineas,—it's all I've saved these eight years,—here they 're for you, and save his life.”
The old man knelt down beside me, and slipping a scissors within the scarf that lay fastened to my side with clotted blood, he proceeded to open and expose the situation of my wound. A cold, sick feeling, a kind of half-fainting sensation, followed this, and I could hear nothing of the dialogue that passed so near me. An occasional sting of pain shot through me as the dressing proceeded; but save this, I had little consciousness of anything.
At length, like one awakening from a heavy slumber, with faculties half clouded by the dreamy past, I looked around me. All was still and motionless in the room. The doctor sat beside the sick man's bed; and Darby, his eyes riveted on me, knelt close to my chair, and held his hand upon the bandage over my wound.
A gentle tap here came to the door, and the child I had seen before entered noiselessly, and approaching the doctor, said, “the car is come, sir.”
The old man nodded in silence, and then, turning towards Darby, he whispered something in his ear. M'Keown sprang to his legs at once, his cheek flushed deeply, and his eyes sparkled with animation.
“I have it! I have it!” cried he, “There never was such luck for us before.”
With that he drew the old man to one side, and speaking to him in a low but rapid tone, evinced by the violence of his gestures and the tremulous eagerness of his voice how deeply he was interested.
“True enough, true enough,” said the old man, after a pause. “Poor Dan has but one more journey before him.”
“Is he able to bear it, doctor?” said Darby, pointing towards me with his finger; “that's all I ask. Has he the strength in him?”