“Well, sir, to tell the truth, I was driving my donkeys to feed on Rock’s land, and when I saw him coming along with a gun I hid in the bracken; for we had words about my taking his feed this very morning, and he swore then that if he caught me at it again he’d shoot me and the dickies too; so I lay pretty close till I saw the other man go by and heard the shriek and the shot.”
‘It is Joan Haste.’
“Come along, for Heaven’s sake!” said Henry: “that devil must have killed some one.”
Now they were near to the Abbey wall, and Willie, catching his companion by the arm, pointed to a dark shape which lay in the white dust of the roadway, and in a terrified whisper said, “Look there! what’s that?”
Henry dashed forward and knelt down beside the shape, peering at its face. Then of a sudden he groaned aloud and said, “It is Joan Haste, and he has shot her!”
“Look at her breast!” whispered Willie, peeping over his shoulder. “I told her how it would be. It was I who found you both a year ago just here and looking like that, and now you see we have all come together again. I told her it was a bad beginning, and would come to a bad end.”
“Be silent, and help me to lift her,” said Henry in a hollow voice; “perhaps she still lives.”
Then together they raised her, and at that moment Joan opened her eyes.