Hardly were the words out of Mr. Skeggs’s mouth when his wooden leg sunk suddenly into a hidden hole in the pathway. Thrown forward by the shock, the lawyer came heavily to the ground, and at the same moment his leg snapped short off just below the knee.
Kester took him by the shoulders and assisted him to assume a sitting posture on the footpath.
Mr. Skeggs’s first action was to pick up his broken limb and look at it with a sort of comical despair. “There goes a friend that has done me good service,” he said; “but he might have lasted till he got me home, for all that. How the deuce am I to get home?” he asked, turning abruptly to Kester.
Kester paused for a minute and looked round before answering. The snow was coming down faster than ever. The moor was being gradually turned into a huge white carpet. Already its zig-zag paths and winding footways were barely distinguishable from the treacherous bog which lay on every side of them. In an hour and a half it would be dark with a darkness that would be unrelieved by either moon or stars. If it kept on snowing all night at this rate the drift would be a couple of feet deep by morning. Skeggs’s casual remark about the pedlar and his wife, unheeded at the time, now flashed vividly across Kester’s mind.
“You will have to wait here till I can get assistance,” he said, in answer to his companion’s question. “There is no help for it.”
“I suppose not,” growled Skeggs. “Was ever anything so cursedly unfortunate?”
“Sedgeley is the nearest place to this,” said Kester. “There are plenty of men there who know the moor thoroughly. I will send half a dozen of them to your help.”
“How soon may I expect them here?”
“In about three-quarters of an hour from now.”
“Ugh! I’m half frozen already. What shall I be in another hour?”