They spoke together for five minutes. Then Daniel started for Bridgetstowe to get a doctor, and Sarah Jane attended to her father. She got him out of his clothes and into bed; she built a big wood fire that set the moisture glimmering on the walls of Gregory's hovel; she heated water and made him drink a stiff glass of hot spirits; and she set about a dish of broth, the ingredients of which Daniel had brought in the basket. Mr. Friend revived presently, but his pain was considerable and he found it difficult to breathe.
"Give me some more brandy," he said. "It lifts up the strength. I did ought to have a plaster put upon my back without a doubt, for I mind a man up here being took just like this. And they put a fiery plaster on him and drawed the evil out."
"There's nought but bread to make it of," said Sarah Jane. "Or else peat."
His eyes brightened.
"That's a good thought—a capital idea! Fetch a bit of the soft and make it red-hot in a saucepan, and 'twill be a very useful thing—better than mustard, very like."
She did her best, and presently Mr. Friend, with a mass of hot peat pressed against his side in a piece of Sarah Jane's flannel petticoat, declared himself much easier.
"'Tis life every way," he said. "This be a great discovery, and very like, if doctors come to know about it, 'twill go further than all they bird-witted engineers to set Amicombe Hill up again."
He stuck to it that the peat was doing him immense good. He drank a little broth when Sarah Jane brought it to him. Then he wandered in his speech, and then for a time he kept silence.
"Better for certain—better for certain now," he said at intervals.
Presently he asked after his grandchild.