"And could I have better company to watch and listen with?" I exclaim. "For with you a tea-king, Tim, and I a lawyer, it would be just the same, would it not?"
"That's just what I was trying to get at," says Tim. "Suppose that day of the fox-hunt you had not carried Weston——"
I hold up my hand to check him.
"Were it to happen a hundred times over, I would take him to Mary's," I cry. "Else he would have died."
"You are right, Mark," Tim says.
I took Weston to Mary's house that day when I found him lying in the charcoal clearing, with little Colonel standing over him wailing. Tearing open his coat and shirt, I stanched his wound as best I could. Then I called the others to me. Tip and Arnold picked him up and carried him, while Murphy Kallaberger and I broke a path through the bushes, and Aaron ran on to Warden's to tell them of the accident and have them prepare for the wounded man. Warden's was the nearest house, but that was a mile from the clearing, and in the woods our progress was slow. Once free of the ridges and in the open fields the way was easy, and Murphy could lend a hand to the others.
"He's monstrous light," Tip said. "He doesn't seem no more than skin and bones in fancy rags."
It is strange how even our clothes go back on us when we are down. Weston I had always known as a lanky man, but about his loosely fitting garments there had been an air of careless distinction. Now that he was broken, they hung with such an odd perversion as to bring from its hiding-place every sharp angle in the thin frame. The best nine tailors living could not have clothed him better for that little journey, nor lessened a whit the pathos of the thin arms that lay limply across the shoulders of Tip and Arnold.
"He's a livin' skelington," old Arker whispered, as I plodded along at his side. "Poor devil!"