“Get up behind me,” said Andy; “I won't leave you here.”
“Run, I tell you.”
“I won't.”
“God bless you, then,” said the woman, as Andy held out his hand and gripped hers firmly.
“Put your foot on mine,” said Andy.
The woman obeyed, and was soon seated behind our hero, gripping him fast by the waist, while he pushed his horse to a fast canter.
“Hold hard now,” said Andy, “for there's a stiff jump here.” As he approached the ditch of which he spoke, two men sprang up from it, and one fired, as Andy cleared the leap in good style, Nance holding on gallantly. The horse was not many strokes on the opposite side, when another shot was fired in their rear, followed by a scream from the woman. To Andy's inquiry, if she was “kilt,” she replied in the negative, but said “they hurt her sore,” and she was “bleeding a power;” but that she could still hold on, however, and urged him to speed. The clearance of one or two more leaps gave her grievous pain; but a large common soon opened before them, which was skirted by a road leading directly to a farm-house, where Andy left the wounded woman, and then galloped off for medical aid; this soon arrived, and the wound was found not to be dangerous, though painful. The bullet had struck and pierced a tin vessel of a bottle form, in which Nance carried the liquid gratuities of the charitable, and this not only deadened the force of the ball, but glanced it also; and the escapement of the butter-milk, which the vessel contained, Nance had mistaken for the effusion of her own blood. It was a clear case, however, that if Nance had not been sitting behind Andy, Lord Scatterbrain would have been a dead man, so that his gratitude and gallantry towards the poor beggar woman proved the means of preserving his own life.