Martin cast him a sullen glance. “I don’t know when — except that it was not long after I had shot the rabbit, and I’ve no notion when that may have been, except that it can’t have been a great while before you were fired at. I’d had no sport; I thought I might as well try for a brace of wood-pigeons, but you know what they are! There’s no getting them, unless you lie-up, once they’ve been alarmed! I crouched down behind a thicket, to wait. I suppose someone stalked me: I don’t know! All I know is that I was struck a stunning blow from behind. I do know that, but nothing more, until I came to myself, and how much later that was I’ve no notion!”
There was a short silence. “And your spaniel?” said the Earl.
“Not with me,” Martin answered, colouring. He raised his eyes. “He had a thorn into his foot, and was dead lame! I would not take him. Ask Hickling if that’s not true! Oh, yes! I know what you are thinking! Hickling would tell any lie to oblige me, would he not?”
“I don’t know. Would he?”
“I daresay! This is the truth!”
“Very well: go on!”
“I tell you, I don’t know what happened! I didn’t come to myself till I was being taken off somewhere, in a cart, or something. I couldn’t see: I was trussed up, and gagged, and there was a sack over my head — not that I cared, for my head was aching fit to split, and I cared for nothing, then,except being jolted so much that I think I went off into another swoon. I don’t remember that, but I do remember feeling devilish bad. And then I wasn’t in a vehicle, but lying on the ground somewhere. It might have been a cow-byre: it smelled like it, but I couldn’t see, or move, and I don’t know. I don’t even know how long I was there: hours and hours, I think! I suppose I slept part of the time. I must have, because I woke up with a start when someone began to haul me up. And then there was more of that curst jolting, and being hauled out of the cart again, and rolling down and down and down!”
“Rolling down where?” asked the Earl.
“It was a sand-pit, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
“Oh! And who rescued you from the sand-pit?”