"Come on home, old kiddie."
It seemed a long time after, Norah could not think of a time when she had done anything but sit with that quiet head on her knee. She shuddered all over.
"I can't leave him."
"You must come, dear." Jim's hands were lifting Bobs' head as tenderly as she herself could have done it. He picked her up and held her as though she had been a baby, and she clung to him, shaking.
"If I could help you!" he said, and there were tears in his eyes. "Oh, Nor.—you know, don't you?"
He felt her hand tighten on his arm. Then he carried her down the hill, where Garryowen stood waiting.
"The others have gone," he said. "I sent them home—Wally and—that brute! I've told him to go—I'll kill him if I see him again!" He lifted her into his saddle, and keeping his arms round her, walked beside the bay horse down the gully and out upon the plain.
"Jim," she whispered—somewhere her voice had gone away—"you can't go home like that. Let me walk." His arm tightened.
"I'm all right," he said—"poor little mate!"
They did not speak again until they were nearly home—where, ahead, Brownie waited, her kind eyes red; while every man about the homestead was near the gate, a stern-faced, angry group that talked in savage undertones. Murty came forward as Jim lifted Norah down.