“Thank you,” he said: “I feel better”; then suddenly fainted away.
In great alarm she poured some more of the spirit down his throat; for now a new terror had taken her that he might be suffering from internal injuries also. To her relief, he came to himself again, and caught sight of the red stain growing upon her white dress.
“You are hurt,” he said. “What a selfish fellow I am, thinking only of myself!”
“Oh, don’t think of me,” Joan answered: “it is nothing, —a mere scratch. What is to be done? How can I get you from here? Nobody lives about, and we are a long way from Bradmouth.”
“There is my horse,” he murmured, “but I fear that I cannot ride him.”
“I will go,” said Joan; “yet how can I leave you by yourself?”
“I shall get on for a while,” Henry answered. “It is very good of you.”
Then, since there was no help for it, Joan rose, and running to where the horse was tied, she loosed it. But now a new difficulty confronted her: her wounded arm was already helpless and painful, and without its aid she could not manage to climb into the saddle, for the cob, although a quiet animal enough, was not accustomed to a woman’s skirts, and at every effort shifted itself a foot or two away from her. At length Joan, crying with pain, grief and vexation, determined to abandon the attempt and to set out for Bradmouth on foot, when for the first time fortune favoured her in the person of a red-haired lad whom she knew well, and who was returning homewards from an expedition in search of the eggs of wild-fowl.
“Oh! Willie Hood,” she cried, “come and help me. A gentleman has fallen from the tower yonder and broken his leg. Now do you get on this horse and ride as hard as you can to Dr. Child’s, and tell him that he must come out here with some men, and a door or something to carry him on. Mind you say his leg is broken, and that he must bring things to tie it up with. Do you understand?”
“Why you’re all bloody!” answered the boy, whose face betrayed his bewilderment; “and I never did ride a horse in my life.”