“Who am I?” said Hilary, trying to get up a sprightly laugh. “Well, I think you must have seen me once or twice in the course of your long life, Miss Lorraine.”
“Oh, Hilary, Hilary, Hilary!”
She threw herself into his arms with a jump, relying upon his accustomed strength, and without any thought of the difference. He tottered backwards, and must have fallen, but for the trunk of a pollard ash. And seeing how it was, she again cried out, “Oh, Hilary, Hilary, Hilary!”
“That is my name,” he answered, after kissing her in a timid manner; “but not my nature; at the present moment I am not so very hilarious.”
“Why, you are not fit to walk, or talk, or even to look like a hero. You are the bravest fellow that ever was born. Oh, how proud we are of you! My darling, what is the matter? Why, you look as if you did not know me! Help, help, help! He is going to die. Oh, for God’s sake, help!”
Poor Hilary, after looking wildly around, and trying in vain to command his mouth, fell suddenly back, convulsed, distorted, writhing, foaming, and wallowing in the depths of epilepsy. Sky, hill, and tree swung to and fro, across his strained and starting eyes, and then whirled round like a spinning-wheel, with radiating sparks and spots. Then all fell into abyss of darkness, down a bottomless pit, into utter and awful loss of everything.
The vigour of youth had fought against this robbery of humanity so long and hard that Alice, the only spectator of the conflict, began to recover from shriek and wailing at the time that her brother fell into the black insensibility. The ground sloped so that if she had not been there, the unfortunate youth must have rolled into the Woeburn, and so ended. But being a prompt and active girl, she had saved him from this at any rate. She had had the wit also to save his tongue, by slipping a glove between his teeth; which scarcely a girl in a hundred, who saw such a thing for the first time, would have done. And now, though her face was bathed in tears, and her hands almost as tremulous as if themselves convulsed, she filled her low-crowned riding-hat with water from the river, and sprinkled his forehead gently, and released his neck from cumbrance. And then she gazed into his thin pale features, and listened for the beating of his heart.
This was so low that she could not hear or even feel it anywhere. “Oh, how can I get him home?” she cried. “Oh, my only brother, my only brother!” In fright and misery she leaped upon a crest of chalk, to seek around for any one to help her; and suddenly she espied her groom against the skyline, a long way off, galloping up the ridge from Chancton. In hope that one of the many echoes of the cliffs might aid her, she shrieked with all her power, and tore a white kerchief from under her riding-habit, and put it on her whip and waved it. And presently she had the joy of seeing the horse’s head turned towards her. The rider had not caught her voice, but had descried some white thing fluttering between him and the sombre stripe which he was watching earnestly.
This groom was a strong and hearty man, and the father of seven children. He made the best of the case, and ventured to comfort his young mistress. And then he laid Hilary upon Elfrida, the docile and soft-stepper; and making him fast with his own bridle, and other quick contrivances, he tethered his own horse to a tree, and leading the mare, set off, with Alice walking carefully and supporting the head of her senseless brother. So came this hero, after all his exploits, back to the home of his fathers.
