The lieutenant whipped out his own weapon at the same moment, received a bullet in his right shoulder, and answered by firing with his left a shot which made Bill leap up in the air with a loud cry. The next moment Tregenna found himself grappling with Jack, who had risen from the ground and seized a broken piece of metal which was lying on the stone floor.
Jack fought like a madman, slashing and plunging at his opponent with a vigor and ferocity which seemed to render the combat a hopeless one for the lieutenant, whose wound was bleeding freely, when, just as Tregenna felt his head growing dizzy and his eyes becoming dim, the smuggler, in making a desperate lunge at him, tripped in some ropes which were lying on the floor, and stumbled headlong over a couple of the smuggled kegs of spirit.
Quick as thought Tregenna seized one of the kegs, sprang to the door, got outside, and wedged the door tightly with the barrel, which he had rolled out in front of him.
The space at the bottom of the steps was just wide enough to allow of this being done; and then, without waiting to see whether the men would make any attempt to escape from their imprisonment, he started for the Parsonage.
Before he got there, however, he found himself staggering, and knew that he would not have strength left to reach the house. As he stood swaying to and fro for a few seconds on the footpath, he caught the sound of a wagon going along slowly at the foot of the hill. There was a man walking beside the horses, cracking his whip and urging them on. It was too dark for Tregenna to see either wagon or man; but the frosty air carried the sounds to him clearly, and carried back his fainting cry—
“Help, help!”
Then he fell down on the grass beside the footpath.
When he came to himself, after a curious experience of being in the sea, swimming for life, with a dozen faces he knew around him, he found that he was still lying on the grass, but that there was at least one face he knew bending over him, looking very weird and strange by the light of a heavy lantern, which had been placed on the ground beside him. And the face was that of Gardener Tom!
“Tom?” cried he faintly.
The great boorish fellow watching over him burst into a great blubbering and sobbing like an overgrown child.