Payton, aided by one of the troopers, was putting on his coat and vest. He paused to bid the other help the gentleman. Then, with a cold look at the fallen man, for whom, though they had been friends, as friends go in the world, he seemed to have no feeling except one of contempt, he walked away in the direction of the rear of the house.
By the time he reached the back door the alarm was abroad, the maids were running to and fro and screaming, and on the threshold he encountered Flavia. Pale as the stricken man, she looked on Payton with an eye of horror, and, as he stood aside to let her pass, she drew—unconscious what she did—her skirts away, that they might not touch him.
He went on, with rage in his heart. "Very good, my lady," he muttered, "very good! But I've not done with you yet. I know a way to pull your pride down. And I'll go about it!"
He might have moved less at ease, he might have spoken less confidently, had he, before he retired from the scene of the fight, cast one upward glance in the direction of the house, had he marked an opening high up in the wall of yew, and noticed through that opening a window, so placed that it alone of all the windows in the house commanded the scene of action. For then he would have discovered at that casement a face he knew, and a pair of stern eyes that had followed the course of the struggle throughout, noted each separate attack, and judged the issue—and the man.
And he might have taken warning.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PITCHER AT THE WELL
The surgeon of that day was better skilled in letting blood than in staunching it, in cupping than in curing. It was well for Luke Asgill, therefore, that none lived nearer than distant Tralee. It was still more fortunate for him that there was one in the house to whom the treatment of such a wound as his was an everyday matter, and who was guided in his practice less by the rules of the faculty than by those of experience and common sense.
Even under his care Asgill's life hung for many hours in the balance. There was a time, when he was at his weakest, when his breath, in the old phrase, would not raise a feather, and those about his bed despaired of detaining the spirit fluttering to be free. The servants were ready to raise the "keen," the cook sought the salt for the death-plate. But Colonel John, mindful of many a man found living on the field hours after he should, by all the rules, have died, did not despair; and little by little, though the patient knew nothing of the battle which was maintained for his life, the Colonel's skill and patience prevailed. The breathing grew stronger and more regular; and, though it seemed likely that fever would follow and the end must remain uncertain, death, for the moment, was repelled.