“Yes, I’ll tak’ him home to my place,” whispered Hickathrift. “You’d scare your mother to dead. Here, Jacob, lad, don’t stop to knock or ask questions, but go and tak’ squire’s cob, and ride him hard to town for doctor.”
“Tell my father as you go by, Jacob,” cried Tom excitedly; and as the apprentice dashed off, Tom’s eyes met those of Dick.
“Don’t look so wild and strange, Dick, old chap,” whispered the lad kindly; and he laid a hand upon Dick’s shoulder, but the boy shrank from him with a shudder which the other could not comprehend.
Hickathrift shouted to his wife, who had risen and dressed in his absence, and in a short time the squire was lying upon a mattress with Hickathrift eagerly searching for the injury which had laid him low; but when he found it, the wound seemed so small and trifling that he looked wondering up at Dick.
“That couldn’t have done it,” he said in a whisper.
The wheelwright was wrong. That tiny blue wound in the strong man’s chest had been sufficient to lay him there helpless, and so near death that a feeling of awe fell upon those who watched and waited, and tried to revive the victim of this last outrage.
It was a terrible feeling of helplessness that which pervaded the place. There was nothing to do save bathe the wounded man’s brow and moisten his lips with a little of the smuggled spirit with which most of the coast cottages were provided in those distant days. There was no blood to staunch, nothing to excite, nothing to do but wait, wait for the doctor’s coming.
Before very long Farmer Tallington arrived, and as he encountered Dick’s eyes fixed upon him he turned very pale, and directly after, when he bent over the squire’s couch and took his hand, the lad saw that he trembled violently.
“It’s straänge and horrible—it’s straänge and horrible,” he said: “only yesterday he was like I am: as strong and well as a man can be; while now—Hickathrift, my lad, do you think he’ll die?”
The wheelwright shook his head—he could not trust himself to speak; and Dick stood with a sensation of rage gathering in his breast, which made him feel ready to spring at Farmer Tallington’s throat, and accuse him of being his father’s murderer.