“Tha's getten what tha deserved, owd lad,” he said in an undertone. “An' tha'st getten no more. I'st owe th' Lunnon chap one fro' this on. He's done a bit o' work as I'd ha' takken i' hond mysen long ago, if I'd ha' been thirty years younger, an' a bit less stiff i' th' hinges.”
Fergus had not escaped without hurt himself, and the first angry excitement over, he began to feel so sharp an ache in his wrist, that he made up his mind to rest for a few minutes at Grace's lodgings before going home. It would be wise to know the extent of his injury.
Accordingly, he made his appearance in the parlor, somewhat startling his friend, who was at supper.
“My dear Fergus!” exclaimed Paul. “How excited you look!”
Derrick flung himself into a chair, feeling rather dubious about his strength, all at once.
“Do I?” he said, with a faint smile. “Don't be alarmed, Grace, I have no doubt I look as I feel. I have been having a brush with that scoundrel Lowrie, and I believe something has happened to my wrist.”
He made an effort to raise his left hand and failed, succumbing to a pain so intense that it forced an exclamation from him.
“I thought it was a sprain,” he said, when he recovered himself, “but it is a job for a surgeon. It is broken.”
And so it proved under the examination of the nearest practitioner, and then Derrick remembered a wrench and shock which he had felt in Lowrie's last desperate effort to recover himself. Some of the small bones had broken.
Grace called in the surgeon himself, and stood by during the strapping and bandaging with an anxious face, really suffering as much as Derrick, perhaps a trifle more. He would not hear of his going home that night, but insisted that he should remain where he was.