“You should have fired at him.”
CHAPTER XXI.
THE dead man’s horse had disappeared, and was probably trotting back to his stable in Twickenham. But Tom Bendibow’s steed, which knew its master, could be heard cropping the herbage a few rods away, at the other end of the open place. This sound, and the struggling breathing of Tom himself, were distinctly audible in the stillness of the night.
Marion, after there was no longer any doubt as to Mr. Grant’s being dead, sat for several minutes motionless and silent, his head resting on her lap. Philip meanwhile was examining Tom’s injuries, which proved to be a crushing blow at the base of the head, behind the right ear, and two upper ribs on the same side broken, apparently by the stamp of a horse’s hoof. It seemed hardly possible that he could live long.
“Shall I lift them into the wagon?” he asked Marion. “We should lose no time in getting home.”
“If you take out the seat of the wagon, they can lie at full length,” she said. “I will get in with them. You must ride Mr. Bendibow’s horse and lead ours.”
The plan was as good as the circumstances admitted; and Philip, assisted by Marion, succeeded in lifting the two lifeless weights into the bottom of the vehicle, in which had previously been placed a kind of pillow, improvised out of Philip’s coat and Marion’s shawl. Marion then got in and supported Tom in such a manner that the jolting might distress him as little as possible; and finally, Philip, having caught and mounted Tom’s horse, grasped the reins of the baker’s phlegmatic steed, and the party moved forward. The strange darkness, which had been at its densest at the moment of the catastrophe, now began to lighten; a star or two appeared toward the east, and gradually the heavy veil of obscurity was withdrawn in the direction of the west and south. The faces of the two victims were faintly revealed. Mr. Grant’s countenance bore a serene and austere expression; but poor Tom’s features were painful to contemplate—the heaviness of insensibility alternated there with the contractions of suffering. “Poor boy!” Marion murmured, more than once, but with an inward and musing tone, as if her compassion extended to something beyond his physical calamity. At other times this compassionate aspect gave place to an expression of stern severity; and this again was once or twice succeeded by a beautifully tender look, which deepened her eyes and made her lips move tremulously. Few words were exchanged between her and Philip during their sad journey, which seemed to both of them as long as a lifetime, and yet brief.
Brief or long, the journey ended at last, and in the paleness of early dawn, Philip, with the help of the astounded baker, who had been aroused for the purpose, carried Tom Bendibow and the body of Mr. Grant through the iron gate, and beneath the overspreading limbs of the cedar, and into the house where Mrs. Lockhart, horror-stricken and speechless, stood to receive them. Then the baker was sent for a physician; the dead man’s body was laid on the bed in his chamber, and Philip did whatever was possible to make Bendibow comfortable in his own room. The latter had by this time begun to regain the use of his senses, and with these—though only feebly and at intervals—the power of speech.
“Did the ... fellow who did this ... get off?” was his first question. To which Philip replied in the affirmative.
After a pause Tom resumed: “Well, I’m done for!”