“Why—what in the world——” he began. “Is it you, North? What? Shot, you say?”
“From over yonder, sir; and I’ve got my death-blow: I think I have. Perhaps if Featherston——”
“I’ll fetch him,” cried Harry Vale. “You stay here with him, Johnny.” And he darted away like a lamplighter, his long legs skimming the grass.
I am nothing but a muff; you know that of old. And never did I feel my own deficiencies come home to me as they did then. Any one else might have known how to stop the bleeding—for of course it ought to be stopped—if only by stuffing a handkerchief into the wound. I did not dare attempt it; I was worse at any kind of surgery than a born imbecile. All in a moment, as I stood there, the young gipsy-woman’s words of the morning flashed into my mind. She had foreseen some ill for him, she said; had scented it in the air. How strange it seemed!
The next to come upon the scene was the Squire, crushing through the brambles when he heard our voices. He and Sir John, in dire wrath at our flight, had come out to look for us and to marshal us back for the start home. I gave him a few whispered words of explanation.
“What!” cried he. “Dying?” and his face went as pale as the man’s. “Oh, my poor fellow, I am sorry for this!”
Stooping over him, the Squire pulled the coat aside. The stains were larger now, the flow was greater. North bent his head forward to look, and somehow got his hand wet in the process. Wet and red. He snatched it away with a kind of horror. The sight seemed to bring upon him the conviction that his minutes were numbered. His minutes. Which is the last and greatest terror that can seize upon man.
“I’m going before God now, and I’m not fit for it,” he cried, a shrieking note, born of emotion, in his weakening voice. “Can there be any mercy for me?”
The Squire seemed to feel it—he has said so since—as one of the most solemn moments of his life. He took off his spectacles—a habit of his when much excited—dropped them into his pocket, and clasped his hands together.
“There’s mercy with God through the Lord Jesus always,” he said, bending over the troubled face. “He pardoned the thief on the Cross. He pardoned all who came to Him. If you are Walter North, as they tell me, you must know all this as well as I do. Lord God have mercy upon this poor dying man, for Christ’s sake!”