She turned in the direction whence the moans came, and peeped over into the plantation. To her horror she saw a man lying on the ground, only a few steps away from her, his face pale as death and streaked with blood.
"I must go to him," she said to herself, "he looks as if he were dying there, all alone in the wood."
Climbing over the low wall, she soon reached his side.
"Why, it's Ben Green!" she exclaimed in surprise. "How ever has he got into this plight? I'm afraid he is badly hurt, poor fellow. He seems quite unconscious, and I think his arm must be broken, it hangs so limply from the shoulder."
She wetted her handkerchief in the rivulet which ran through the coppice, and wiped the stains from his face, then, binding the cool bandage round his forehead, she rose to her feet and started off towards the village.
"The sooner I get help, the better," she decided. "I can't do him any good by staying with him here."
It was not long before the wounded man was carefully borne on a stretcher to his room at "The Bull," and his injuries ascertained by the doctor.
"He has been badly shot," was the report. "It is a marvel he was not killed on the spot. If one of the pellets had gone a quarter of an inch more to one side, it would have penetrated the brain. As it is, he is suffering from shock and loss of blood, besides the injury to the arm, which was evidently caused by a fall."
Tongues were let loose that evening in the little hamlet, as conjectures and suggestions were freely bandied to and fro.
"I must say it looks queer," remarked Jones, the keeper, as he discussed the situation with a knot of men at the public-house door. "The squire goes to that there wood in the morning with his gun, and refuses to let me come with him, as would only have been natural, for to pick up the birds. Mrs. Power she finds a man shot in that very wood a few hours later, and as all here know, there was no one whom Mr. Field would sooner see put out of the way than this same identical victim. He was in a fine temper when I met him, and it's my belief he has had more to do with this affair than he would care to tell."