A few minutes later, Chirk entered the kitchen to find the victim of the late assault slumped in a chair, with the Captain, a somewhat grim look in his face, forcing brandy down his throat.
“Not hopped the twig, has he?” Chirk asked, shutting the door.
“Oh, no!”
“I didn’t think he had. He cast up his accounts, back there along the road, but he didn’t swoon off till a minute or two before I got him to the gate. Someone knifed him in the back.”
“I know that. Help me to strip off his coat!” John said, withdrawing his arm from behind the inert form, and showing his shirt-sleeve stained with blood. “He’s lost a good deal of blood, from the look of things, but I should say it’s not serious.”
Coat and waistcoat were expeditiously removed, and tossed aside. The Captain then ripped up the shirt, and disclosed a long gash down one shoulder, which was still sluggishly bleeding.
“Nothing but a cut. I’ve seen many worse,” said John, going over to the sink, and pouring some water from the pail that stood under it into a tin bowl.
“Ah!” said Chirk, with satisfaction. “I rather suspicioned I spoilt the cull’s aim! I saw the chive he had in his famble flash in the moonlight, so I loosed off one of my barking-irons over his head, because chives I don’t hold with! They showed their shapes quick then!—him and the other cove.”
“Who were they? Did you see their faces?”
“It would have queered me to do that, Soldier: they were muffled up to the eyes. Well, I was wearing a mask myself, but I don’t go winding scarves round my phiz!” He shifted the heavy body he was supporting so that John could more easily bathe the gash. “If they were foot-scamperers, I don’t know what they were doing on this road, nor what they hoped to prig, nor why they set on a chap like this, that wouldn’t have anything in his pockets worth the taking. Sticking a chive into a cove for the sake of a coach-wheel or two, and maybe a silver tatler, is nasty work, Soldier, and I don’t hold with it. Blubberheaded, too,” he added thoughtfully. “That’s the way to get snabbled, sure as a gun! I wonder who this cove is?”