It was all over, for help had come. Nearly dozen of the servants and stablemen from the Court poured into the enclosure, some taking up the pursuit, some making preparations to carry Heggs and the other wounded man up to the house, some tying together the hands, and zealously guarding my prisoner, and all plying me with eager questions. My recollection of all that directly followed is obscure. I remember staggering across the park up to the Court, and meeting Sir Francis, anxious yet thankful, in the courtyard. Then faint and giddy, the blood pouring from a wound in my head down my shirt-front, and my clothes torn and soiled, I sank down upon a couch in the hall, whilst Sir Francis, with his own hand, strove to force some brandy down my throat. A deadly, sickening unconsciousness was creeping over me; there was a singing in my cars, and a buzzing in my head. But although every one and everything around me seemed to my reeling senses confused and chaotic, one person I saw as vividly as my eyes could show her to me. First standing in the open doorway, then close to my side. I saw her with white, pitying face, and an agony of terror in her dimmed blue eyes, gazing at my shirt-front soaked with blood, and asking eagerly, with quivering lips, where I was hurt. And my last effort was to force a ghastly smile and to utter reassuring words, which died away half-uttered and altogether incomprehensible upon my lips. Then black darkness surged in upon me, blotting her out from my sight, and I swooned.
CHAPTER XVI
MY CONVALESCENCE
For three days and nights I lay at Devereux Court in danger of my life, but at the end of that time the concussion of the brain from which I was suffering suddenly abated, and I commenced to make rapid strides towards recovery. Everything that skill and kindness could do for me was done. Marian was my principal nurse, but often in the afternoons Lady Olive and Maud would come and sit with me, whilst more than once I woke up to find Sir Francis Devereux himself by my side.
As soon as I was well enough to talk I asked eagerly whether any of the other poachers had been taken. Sir Francis shook his head, and looked severe.
"Not one of them," he declared in a vexed tone. "I scarcely have patience to speak about it at the police-office, it seems so scandalous. A thick-head set of muffs they must be!"
How surprised he would have been if any one had told him his answer was a great relief to me—and yet it was so. There was one man among that gang of poachers whom I did not wish to be caught.
"And was Heggs much hurt?" I asked.
Sir Francis shook his head.
"The old man was cut about a bit, but not seriously injured. Richard—that's the son, you know—came off very easily, and was able to tell us all about it. Can't say much about it, Arbuthnot, my boy, for the doctor has given orders that there's to be no talking; but you behaved splendidly, just as I should like my own son to have behaved," he added, in a somewhat husky tone.