“Get me the pen and ink, woman!” exclaimed the sufferer impatiently.
Mrs Pottles raised her hands, and then hurriedly placed a little dirty blotting-case before her guest, holding it and the rusty ink so that he was able to write a short note, which he signed, and then doubled hastily, for he was evidently in pain.
“Let some man take that to the King’s Arms at Lexville, and ask for Mr Bray. If he is not there, let them send for him; but the note is to be given to no one else.”
“Very good, sir,” said the woman; “but it’s a many miles there. How’s he to go?”
“Ride—ride!” exclaimed the sufferer impatiently, and then he sank back deeper in his pillow.
“I didn’t think, or I would have sent for some one else,” he muttered, after a pause; “but I daresay he will come.”
And then he lay thinking in a dreamy, semi-delirious fashion of the contents of that note—a note so short, and yet of itself containing matter that might bring to the writer a life of regret, and to another, loving, gentle, and true-hearted, the breaking of that true gentle heart, and the cold embrace of the bridegroom Death!