I was sure, then, he was desperately injured, his voice was so weak and changed.
"Where are you hurt, Guy?" some one asked. I could not speak myself.
"I don't know," he said, looking down in a strange, bewildered way. "My head and arm pain me; but I feel nothing below the waist."
His lower limbs were not much twisted or distorted, but they bore a horribly inert, dead appearance. There was not even a muscular quiver in them.
I saw the Squire of Brainswick turn his head away with a shudder and a groan (he loved Guy as his own son), and I heard him mutter, "The spine!"
It was so, and Livingstone soon knew it himself. He sighed once, drearily; but not a man there could have commanded his voice as he did when he said,
"You must carry me home, heavy as I am. My walking days are ended."
We made the best litter we could of poles and branches; and I remember, as we bore him past the carcass of the Axeine, he made us stop for an instant, and dropping his hand on the stiff, distorted neck, stroked it softly,
"Good-by, old horse," he said. "It was no fault of yours. How well you always carried me!" He never spoke again till we reached Kerton Manor.
Isabel Forrester was fortunately out, but Lady Catharine met us on the hall steps. She did not shriek or faint when she saw the horror, which had haunted her for years, fulfilled there to the uttermost. She knelt by her son when we laid him down, and wiped off a spot or two of blood from his forehead, and then kept his hand in hers, kissing it often. We had sent on before to warn the village doctor, and he visited Guy alone in his room.