'Stand back, sir. This is no time for words. "Accident," you say. To me it seems a piece of cowardly revenge—a case for the police and the Procurator-Fiscal.'
At these words Hawkey Sharpe grew, if possible, paler still, as they were the echoes of his own fears, and drew sullenly back.
'My poor, dear fellow—Elliot—Jack,' exclaimed Roland, kneeling down by his friend's side, 'are you much hurt—tell me?'
'I cannot say,' replied Elliot faintly. 'I feel as if my breast was scorched with fire—the charge, or some of it, seems thereabout.' Then, after a pause, he added in a husky voice: 'This horrible accident is most inopportune, when my leave is running out, and I am so soon due at headquarters.'
'Don't bother about that, dear Jack, I'll make all that right—meantime your hurt must be instantly seen to. Jamie Spens, run, as if for your life, my man, to the stables; get a good horse from Buckle, and ride to Cupar on the spur for the doctors—send a couple, at least.'
'Let me—let me go!' urged Hawkey Sharpe, in a breathless voice.
'You—be hanged!' cried old Fowler, who, like all the people on and about the estate, hated the tyrannical steward.
So the ex-poacher was away on his errand—speeding across the fields like a hare.
'Now, my lads,' cried Roland, after having, with soldier-like promptitude, secured a handkerchief folded as a pad, by another torn into bandages, across the wound; 'quick with that iron hurdle,' pointing to one in a gap of the hedge; 'hand it here to form a litter.'
Roland, like Elliot, had faced danger and death too often to be made a woman by it now, and his eyes seemed stern and fearless as he gave one long, steady, and withering glance at the cowering and white-faced Hawkey Sharpe; then he took off his coat, an example others were not slow in following, to make as soft a couch as possible of the iron hurdle, which four stout fellows lifted, as soon as the sufferer was laid thereon, and the sorrowful procession, which Hester from the window had seen approaching, set out for Earlshaugh.