If the old London and Dover road had been what it once was, there would have been a crowd about the carriage by this time. Except, however, two or three servants of the “Royal Oak,” who had come out to see, no one had yet joined the little group but the boy who was detained, bridle in hand, at the horse's head.
“He'll not be dead yet,” repeated the postilion dogmatically.
“What happened him?” asked Mr. Truelock.
“I don't know,” answered the post-boy.
“Then how can you say whether he be dead or no?” demanded the innkeeper.
“Fetch me a pint of half-and-half,” said the dismounted post-boy, aside, to one of the “Royal Oak” people at his elbow.
“We was just at this side of High Hixton,” said his brother in the saddle, “when he knocked at the window with his stick, and I got a cove to hold the bridle, and I came round to the window to him. He had scarce any voice in him, and looked awful bad, and he said he thought he was a-dying. ‘And how far on is the next inn?’ he asked; and I told him the ‘Royal Oak’ was two miles; and he said, ‘Drive like lightning, and I'll give you half a guinea a-piece’—I hope he's not gone dead—‘if you get there in time.’”
By this time their heads were in the carriage again.
“Do you notice a sort of a little jerk in his foot, just the least thing in the world?” inquired the landlord, who had sent for the doctor. “It will be a fit, after all. If he's living, we'll fetch him into the 'ouse.”
The doctor's house was just round the corner of the road, where the clump of elms stands, little more than a hundred yards from the sign of the “Royal Oak.”