"All right, sir!" cried the servant, springing up behind the vehicle.
And away went the cabriolet with the rapidity of lightning.
In the meantime a crowd had collected; and amongst the spectators thus assembled were two individuals who seemed to take a more than common interest in the painful scene.
One was Filippo, who happened to be passing at the moment: but he kept behind the crowd, so that Greenwood might not perceive him.
The other was the hump-back Gibbet, whom accident likewise made a witness of the event, and who, observing the cruel indifference with which the gentlemen in the cab had treated a misfortune caused by themselves, felt suddenly interested in behalf of the victim of their carelessness.
The policeman procured a stretcher; and, with the aid of two or three of the idlers whom the accident had collected to the spot, he conveyed Greenwood to Saint Bartholomew's Hospital.
Filippo hurried rapidly away the moment he saw his late master removed in the manner described; but Gibbet, who, we should observe, was clad in deep mourning, walked by the side of the procession.
Greenwood fainted, through excessive pain, while he was being conveyed to the hospital; and when he came to himself again, he was lying in a narrow bed, upon a hard mattress stretched on an iron framework, while the house-surgeon was setting his leg, which had been broken.
The room was long and crowded with beds, in each of which there was a patient; for this was the Casualty Ward of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital.