"Run, run," cried the boy; "there are the magistrates and the constables all coming up--run over by the style there; I brought the chaise to the end of the lane.
"I can't go," said Ned Hayward, "till I hear what is to come of this."
"You had better go," said the surgeon, looking up; "it does not seem to me to be dangerous, but you may get into prison if you stay. No, it has shattered the rib, but passed round. He will do well, I think. Run, run; I can see the people coming."
Beauchamp took Ned Hayward's arm and drew him away. In two minutes they had reached the chaise and were rolling on; but then Ned Hayward leaned back somewhat languidly, and said,
"I wish, Beauchamp, you would just tie your handkerchief tight round my shoulder here, for it is bleeding more than I thought, and I feel sickish."
"Good Heavens! are you hurt?" exclaimed Beauchamp, and opening his waistcoat, he saw that the whole right side of his shirt was steeped in blood.
CHAPTER XXVI.
I do believe, from my very heart and soul, that there is not the slightest possible good in attempting to write a book regularly. I say with prime ministers and maid-servants, with philosophers and fools, "I've tried it, and surely I ought to know." It may be objected that the result entirely depends upon the way in which a thing is tried, and that a very simple experiment would fail or might fail in the hands of a fool or a maid-servant, which would succeed in those of a prime minister or a philosopher. Nevertheless, it is true that critics make rules which life will not conform to. Art says one thing, nature another; and, in such a case, a fig for art! Art may teach us how to embellish nature, or show us what to portray.
"Do not be continually changing the scene," says the critic, "do not run from character to character; introduce no personage who does not tend to bring about some result;" but in the course of human events the scene is always shifting; the characters which pass before our eyes, cross and return at every instant, and innumerable personages flit before us like shadows over a glass, leaving no trace of their having been. Others, indeed, appear for an instant not only on the limited stage of domestic life, but often on the great scene of the world, act their appointed part, produce some particular effect, and then like those strange visitants of our system, the comets, rush back into the depths from which they emerged but for an hour.
All this has been written to prove that it is perfectly right and judicious that I should introduce my beloved reader into the study of Mr. Wharton, or rather Abraham Wharton, Esq., solicitor, and attorney-at-law. Mr. Wharton was a small, spare, narrow man, of a tolerably gentlemanlike figure; and, to look at his back, one of those prepossessions which lead us all by the nose, made one believe that his face must be a thin, sharp, foxlike face, probably with a dark black beard, closely shaved, making the muzzle look blue.