‘Now, ladies, wait here for a few moments. I must bring help.’
‘Stop one minute!’ cried the mother. ‘Is he in danger?’
‘Grave danger.’
‘Will he die?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ And with that the stranger leaped on shore, and ran like a racehorse across the fields and into the nearest house, where he turned out the residents in a body, and made them unship a five-barred gate. There were plenty of cushions in the boat, and he wasted no time in getting others. The helpers beaten up by the doctor worked with a will; and one ran off in advance and seized upon a punt belonging to the Campers Out, and set it at the end of the house-boat, towards the shore. Over this they bore Leland, and laid him on the cushions which the doctor had arranged upon the gate. Then they carried him into the ‘Swan’ and got him to bed there.
Lilian and her mother, trembling and struggling with their tears, followed the bearers. The crowd which always accompanies disaster, even in a village, made its comments as the melancholy little cortege went along, and Lilian could not fail to overhear. Hodges was there.
‘I know’d what it ud come to,’ proclaimed Hodges loudly. ‘They was a naggin’ every night, like mad, they was. I told you all what it ud come to.’
‘So a did,’ said others in the crowd. Then some one asked ‘Where’s t’other chap?’ and in the murmur Lilian heard her lover’s name again and again repeated.
She knew well enough—she could not fail to know—the meaning of the murmurs; but she started as though she had been struck when Hodges said aloud, so that all might hear—
‘They was a naggin’ again last night, an’ then theer was a shot; and then ten minutes arterwards that Barndale bolts and knocks me over at the bottom o’ the station steps. What’s all that pint to?’