“Spicer,” said I, “I have come to see you; I am sorry to hear of your accident. How is your leg? is it better?”
“No, not much,” replied he, writhing, “I am in great pain; another man would scream out with the agony, but I’m like the wolf,—I’ll die without complaint.”
“But you don’t think that you’re going to die, Spicer?”
“No, Jack, I don’t think that; I never have thought that, when I have been worse than now. I’ll never believe that I’m dead until I find myself so. It must come some time or another, but I’m hale and hearty in constitution as yet, and my time is not yet come.”
“It was the iron railings which you fell over, was it not? I fell over them myself the same night when I landed, on the Monday, going up to old Nanny’s.”
“Who told you it was those cursed spikes? Well, well, so it was; but not on the Monday, Jack, it was on the Wednesday.”
“Nay, that cannot be; for on the Tuesday, as I went down to the beach, I saw them all fixed up in the stonework, and soldered in. It must have been on the Monday—the night on which old Nanny was nearly smothered by some one who went in to rob her. I came there just in time to save her life; indeed, if you recollect, you were lame the next day, when I met you in the hospital.”
“Well, Jack, you may think what you please; but I tell you it was on the Wednesday.”
“Then you must have fallen over something else.”
“Perhaps I did.”