“As if I ever doubted it! Now let me carry you right home, my little wounded bird. The sooner the better.”
“No, I tell ’e. Help me to my feet—now this instant minute, if you doan’t want me to go mad! Theer’s things hid—terrible things! I must go. He won’t wait for me; he swore it. Down to the gert beech he bides—Jan—Jan Aggett! Oh, help me, my own love; help me, Tim, for my body’s weak an’ I can’t rise up without ’e.”
“To him—help you to him!”
“I mean it. I can’t tell you nothin’. For the love of the Lard, doan’t talk no more. Oh, if I thwart un!”
She struggled desperately, like a trapped animal that sees dog or man approaching; and he helped her to stand, though now he scarcely knew what he did. Then the pang of a dislocated bone in her foot pierced the girl and she cried aloud and sank back breathless and faint with pain.
“I can’t go to un, so you must. Hasten, hasten, if ever you loved me, an’ mend the gert wrong you’ve done by bringing me to this. Speed down to the beech at the corner o’ the woods an’ tell Jan Aggett what have fallen out. Never mind me; my foot ban’t no account; but Jan—him—tell un I’m here against my will. Shout aloud through the peace o’ the night as you’m coming to un from me.”
Still he hesitated until her voice rose in a high-pitched shriek of impatience and she tore her hair and beat her breast. Then he departed and even ran as she screamed to him to go faster.
Once fairly started, Timothy made the best of his way to Postbridge for a doctor and man’s aid to carry Sarah to her home. At the dripping well beside the stile he stopped a moment and shouted his rival’s name till the woods echoed; but no answer came and he ran on, gasping, to the village.
Fifteen minutes later Timothy returned to the hill with a medical man and two labourers. Investigation proved that Sarah Belworthy had not been very gravely injured, though her mind was evidently suffering from some serious shock. She asked for Aggett on Tim’s return and, being assured that he had left the beech tree before her messenger reached it, she relapsed into silence. Soon the slight dislocation in her foot was reduced and she lay in comfort on the pallet that she had thought to press no more.