“Go on,” said the boy, “go you on. I’ve been a sore trouble to you the day, have done with me now.”
“I will not leave you,” said Neal, “we’ll take our chance together.”
He watched Hope’s little force disappear up the road. Then he dragged the boy through the hedge into the meadow beyond it, and lay down in the deep grass.
“Is your leg very bad?” said Neal.
“It’s no that bad, only I canna walk. It’s bled a power, my stocking’s soaked with the blood. Maybe if we could tie it up better we might stop it and I’d get strength to go again.”
Neal dragged the lining from his coat, and tore it into strips. He cut the stocking from the boy’s leg with his pocket-knife, and bandaged a long flesh wound as best he could.
“Rest now,” he said, “and after a while we’ll try and get on a bit.”
They lay in the deep, cool grass. There was pure air round them, and they drew deep breaths of it into throats and lungs parched by the fumes of sulphurous smoke. A delicious silence wrapped them, folded them as if in a tender, kind embrace. A faint breeze stirred the grass, waved the white plumes of the meadow sweet, shook the blue vetch flowers and the purple spears of lusmor. In the hedge the reddening blooms of faded hawthorn still lingered. The honeysuckle fragrance filled the air. Groups of merry-faced dog-daisies nodded in the ditch, and round their stalks were buttercups, and beyond them the rich yellow of marsh marigolds. Neal fancied himself awaking from some hideous nightmare. It became impossible to believe in the reality of the battle, the fierce passion of it, the smoke, the sweat, the wounds, the cries. He was lulled into delicious ease. Rest was for the time the supreme good of life. His eyes closed drowsily. He was back in Dunseveric again, and in his ears the noise of a gentle summer sea.
He was roused by a touch of his companion’s hand.
“I’m afraid there’s a wheen o’ sogers coming up the road.”