He stooped to fling the now useless axe into the bushes and turned to take his horse by the bridle.
“Fare you well, Madam,” he said, “and you also, you brave and saucy lad. Keep the pistols, if you will, Mistress Sheffield, as a memory of that King James in whose service I first carried them. And if you can, think not too ill of one who is forced to wear George of Hanover’s red coat and eat his bread while his own true heart is with the King over the water.”
He mounted his horse and had turned to ride away when Stephen began to climb down. The adventure was over, there was nothing left to happen further. It was only chance and because the boy turned his head to take one more look across the wide landscape spread out before him, only his own carelessness that made him slip, catch at a swaying bough, miss it and fall down—and down—and down.
CHAPTER X
“SHIPS OF ADVENTURE”
Stephen opened his eyes once, as he was borne up toward the house and saw, in one sudden flash, the whole bright garden lying still and quiet in the hot sun. He saw his mother, white-cheeked and agonised, coming up the path behind him and still unconsciously clutching the great pistols in her apron. He wondered a little who was carrying him and, contriving to look upward, saw that it was Sergeant Branderby and that his red face, under its coat of sunburn, had turned to mottled grey. Then a sudden stab of pain went through him and all was black again.
That cloud of darkness seemed to hang over him for weeks—or was it years? Sometimes it would lift and he would realise that he was in his own bed with his mother’s anxious face bending over him, would see the open lattice window with the red tendrils of woodbine clinging to its edge, or with the moon peeping in perhaps, for in his moments of awaking it would be sometimes day and sometimes night. Once he saw the Sergeant’s unhappy face at the door and was about to call to him to come in when the blackness fell again before he could find his voice. It was a queer darkness, full of pain and flashes of light and fantastic dreams that he could never remember.
In the village of Hopewell there was never one person who could pass another without stopping to ask:
“Have you heard aught that is new of little Stephen Sheffield?”
The old doctor, when he left the big house and came out through the white gate could scarcely make his way along, so many there were who came running to him to gasp out: