“When did he fall, and what is his name, my boy?” asked the doctor.
“I don’t know when he fell, sir; but I saw Joan Haste about six o’clock time. Since then I’ve been getting here with this here horse; and I wish that I’d stuck to my legs, for all the help he’s been to me—the great idle brute! I’d rather wheel a barrow of bricks nor pull him along behind me. Oh! the name? She said it was Captain Graves of Rosham: that was what I was to tell her aunt.”
“Captain Graves of Rosham!” said Dr. Childs to himself. “Why, I heard Mr. Levinger say that he was coming to stay with him to-day!”
Then he went into the house, and ten minutes later he was on his way to Ramborough in a dog-cart, followed by some men with a stretcher. On reaching the ruined abbey, the doctor stood up and looked round; but, although the moon was bright, he could see no one. He called aloud, and presently heard a faint voice answering him. Leaving the cart in charge of his groom, he followed the direction of the sound till he came to the foot of the tower. Here, beneath the shadow of the spiked tomb, clasping the senseless body of a man in her arms, he found a woman—Joan Haste— whose white dress was smirched with blood, and who, to all appearance, had but just awakened from a faint. Very feebly—for she was quite exhausted—she explained what had happened; and, without more words, the doctor set to work.
“It’s a baddish fracture,” he said presently. “Lucky that the poor fellow is insensible.”
In a quarter of an hour he had done all that could be done there and in that light, and by this time the men who were following with the stretcher, were seen arriving in another cart. Very gently they lifted Henry, who was still unconscious, on to the stretcher, and set out upon the long trudge back to Bradmouth, Dr. Childs walking by their side. Meanwhile Joan was placed in the dog-cart and driven forward by the coachman, to see that every possible preparation was made at the Crown and Mitre, whither it was rapidly decided that the injured man must be taken, for it was the only inn at Bradmouth, and the doctor had no place for him in his own house.
At length they arrived, and Henry, who by now was recovering consciousness, was carried into Joan’s room, an ancient oak-panelled apartment on the ground floor. Once this room served as the justice-chamber of the monks; for what was now the Crown and Mitre had been their lock-up and place of assize, when, under royal charter, they exercised legal rights over the inhabitants of Bradmouth. There the doctor and his assistant, who had returned from visiting some case in the country, began the work of setting Henry’s broken leg, aided by Mrs. Gillingwater, Joan’s aunt, a hard-featured, stout and capable-looking woman of middle age. At length the task was completed, and Henry was sent to sleep under the influence of a powerful narcotic.
“And now, sir,” said Mrs. Gillingwater, as Dr. Childs surveyed his patient with a certain grave satisfaction, for he felt that he had done well by a very difficult bit of surgery, “if you have a minute or two to spare, I think that you might give Joan a look: she’s got a nasty hole in her shoulder, and seems shaken and queer.”
