'Fules shouldna hae chappin' sticks! I kent how it wad be wi' some o' us,' muttered old Gavin Fowler, as he sharply drew his cartridges, and unaware of Hawkey Sharpe's secret motives for action, added, 'Maister Roland, he has nearly made cauld meat o' me mair than ance; but ne'er again—ne'er again will I beat the coveys wi' him. It is as muckle as your life's worth!'
Slowly the shooting party wended their way, by field and hedgerow, towards the mansion-house; and, with his heart full of bitter and vengeful, if vague, thoughts, Roland strode by that blood-stained litter, thinking of the time when he had seen Jack Elliot similarly borne from the field of Tel-el-Kebir.
Seeing the deep commiseration of Roland, Elliot attempted to smile, and said:
'You know, perhaps, the old Spanish proverb—that a soldier had better smell of polvora rancho de Santa Barbara, than of musk or lavender.'
'But not in this fashion, Jack, at the hands of a blundering cad—if a blunder it was!'
The bearers had some distance to traverse, as the park stretched for a couple of miles around them, wooded and undulating, crossed by a broad silvery burn or stream, that flowed through the haugh, and past the Weird Yett to the hamlet of Earlshaugh.
Their arrival at the house elicited a shout of dismay from Tom Trotter, whose nerves were not of the strongest order, and consternation spread from the drawing-room to the servants' hall and from thence to the stable court, with many exaggerated reports of the very awkward part the obnoxious Mr. Hawkey Sharpe—for obnoxious he was to all—had played in the catastrophe; while the anguish of Maude, her suspicion and her loathing of the latter, may be imagined, as Elliot was borne past her to his rooms.
On hearing of an accident, neither Annot nor Hester had thought of Captain Elliot. The first dread of the former—a selfish one, we fear, and of the latter, a purer one, certainly—was for Roland Lindsay, who, accustomed to bloodshed, wounds, and suffering, was to all appearance singularly cool and collected.
'Don't be alarmed, Maudie, darling,' said he, endeavouring to look cheerful, as he drew his terrified sister almost forcibly aside; 'Jack will be all right in a few days.'
'But what—oh, what has happened?'