"Yes; but they are only where the other dog's teeth entered, and came through; see, they are only holes; the dog is quite exhausted, but will soon come round. Come here, Winny, and feel him yourself."
Winny stretched over, and Emon took her hand to guide it to the spots where her poor dog had been wounded. Poor Bully looked up at her, and feebly endeavored to wag his tail, and Winny smiled and wept together. Emon was a very long time explaining to her precisely where the wounds were, and how they must have been inflicted; and he found it necessary to hold her hand the whole time. Whether Winny, in the confusion of her grief, knew that he did so, nobody but herself can tell. Three or four persons who knew Winny had kindly come up to see how the dog was, and the expert amongst them, with so much confidence that he was going to set him on his legs at once. But Emon had taken special charge of him, and would not suffer so premature an experiment, nor the interference of any other doctor.
But here comes the gossoon with the whiskey, like a hare indeed, across the fields, and his middle finger stuck in the neck of the bottle by way of a cork.
Emon took it from him, and claiming the assistance of the expert, whom he had just now repudiated, for a few moments to hold his head, he placed the neck of the bottle in Bully-dhu's mouth. He poured "the least taste in life" down his throat, and with his hand washed his jaws and tongue copiously with the spirits.
With a sort of yelp poor Bully made a struggle and a plunge, and rose to his feet. Winny held out her hand to him, and he staggered over toward her, looking up in her face, and wagging his tail.
"I told you so," said Emon; "get me a handful of salt."
The same cabin which had supplied the "live coal" was applied to by the gossoon (who kept the change), and it was quickly brought.
Emon then rubbed some into the wounds, in spite of Winny's remonstrances as to the pain, and the dog's own unequivocal objections to the process.
Matters were now really on the mend. Bully-dhu shook himself, looking after the crowd with a growl; and even Winny had no doubt that Emon's prescriptions had been necessary and successful.
"The sooner you get home now with him, Winny, the better," said Emon.