“All right, my lass. Quick: go back to the lodge for a lantern. Man shot.”
She turned and ran back, while we kept on, and reached an opening in the wood, where we made out, dimly, two tall figures, and my blood turned cold at a piteous moaning from somewhere on the ground.
“Who’s there?” cried Bob Hopley’s voice.
“Only us, Bob,” I said. “Are you hurt?”
“Nay, lad, not a bit. I should ha’ been, though, if Mr Lomax hadn’t knocked up the barrel with his stick and then downed the man.”
“You’ve murdered my mate,” came from close by our feet. “You’ve shot him.”
“First time I ever did shoot anything without a gun,” said the keeper. “One of you hit him, or he did it himself.”
“You shot him—you murdered him,” cried the man who had spoken, struggling to his knees, and then crouching among the pine needles, holding his head with his hands as if it were broken, and rocking himself to and fro.
“Oh, if that’s it,” said Bob Hopley, “I must have witnesses. Mr Lomax, I’ve just come from Hastings. I heard the shooting o’ my fezzans, and I come on with this stick. You see I’ve no gun, and you, too, young gents?”
“Yah! you shot him,” groaned the man, who was evidently in great pain; “and then you knocked me down with the bar’l o’ the gun.”