She stopped to listen, as quite a disturbance came from the gate.
“Is—is it an accident, Mrs Hampton?” whispered Gertrude.
“Yes, my dear. I don’t think there is any doubt about that.”
“Look sharp, please,” came in a voice full of remonstrance, as the gentlemen hurried down to the gate, to find a desperate struggle going on in the fly, where the driver was seated with his head tucked down upon his chest to avoid blows, while he held his fare tightly round the waist. “Ah, that’s better. Take hold of his fisties, somebody. He’s reg’lar mad.”
“Poor fellow!” exclaimed Saul, seizing one of the struggling man’s arms, while Doctor Lawrence got hold of the other, and between them they drew the sufferer out of the fly on to his knees by the gate.
“That’s better,” said the fly-man. “Lucky I’ve got my quiet old mare. He gave such a jump once, he startled even her.”
“Here, lend a hand,” said the doctor sharply, as his patient began to struggle furiously, and tried to fling them off, “all of you. We’re four. We’ll take a wrist each, Hampton. You two young men take an ankle apiece.”
“Why, that’s same as they does the sojers when they’re a bit on,” said the fly-man.
“No, no,” cried the doctor. “The other way. Not face downwards.”
The patient was in a sitting position on the gravel, laughing idiotically, and trying to troll out portions of a song, but as he felt himself seized and lifted from the ground his whole manner changed: he struggled furiously, his face became distorted, and he burst forth into a tirade of oaths and curses directed at all in turn.