She had barely spoken, when the throng standing over the dog-cart was invaded by a new-arrival, one who had been walking in a neighbouring field, and wondered what the collection could mean. The rustics fell back and stared at him: first, because he was a stranger; secondly, because his appearance was somewhat out of the common way; thirdly, because he carried a red umbrella. A tall man with a long white beard, a hat, the like of which had never been seen by country eyes, and a foreign look.
You will at once recognise him for the traveller who had introduced himself at the parsonage as the Reverend Mr. Daw, a friend of its owner. The crowd, having had no such introduction, could only stare, marvelling whether he had dropped from the clouds. He had been out all the afternoon, taking notes of the neighbourhood, and since his conversation with old Canham—which you heard related afterwards to Mr. Chattaway, to that gentleman's intense dread—he had plunged into the fields on the opposite side of the way. There he had remained, musing and wandering, until aroused by the commotion which he speedily joined.
"What has happened?" he exclaimed. "An accident?"
The assemblage fell back. Rustics are prone to be suspicious of strangers, if their appearance is peculiar, and not one of them found a ready answer. Nora, however, whose tongue had, perhaps, never been at fault in its whole career, stood her ground.
"There's not much damage done, as far as I can learn," she said, in her usual free manner. "The dog-cart's the worst of it. There it lies. It was Cris Chattaway's own; and I should think it will be a lesson to him not to be so fond of driving strange horses."
"Is it to the Chattaways the accident has occurred?" asked the stranger.
Nora nodded. She was stooping down to survey more critically the damages done to the dog-cart. "Cris Chattaway was driving his mother out," she said, rising. "He was trying a strange horse, and this was the result," touching the wheel with her foot. "Madam was thrown into the ditch here."
"And hurt?" laconically asked Mr. Daw.
"Only shaken—as they say. But a shaking may be dangerous for one so delicate as Madam Chattaway. A pity but it had been him."
Nora spoke the last word with emphasis so demonstrative that her hearer raised his eyes in wonderment. "Of whom do you speak?" he said.