'Why, Child, for a choice between the hills and what else may happen if we stay here, give me the hills, even for a wounded man. But, indeed'—he whispered, so that my mother should not hear him—'he will die. Death is written on his face. I know not how long he will live. But he must die. Never did any man recover from such evil plight.'
He harnessed the pony to the cart, which was little more than a couple of planks laid side by side, and laid father upon them, just as he had brought him from Taunton. My mother made a kind of pillow for him, with grass tied up in her kerchief, and so we hoped that he would not feel the jogging of the cart.
'The stream,' said Barnaby, 'comes down from the hills. Let us follow its course upwards.'
It was a broad stream with a shallow bed, for the most part flat and pebbly, and on either side of the stream lay a strip of soft turf, broad enough for the cart to run upon. So that, as long as that lasted, we had very easy going, my mother and I walking one on each side, so as to steady the pillow and keep the poor head upon it from pain. But whether we went easy, or whether we went rough, that head made no sign of feeling aught, and lay, just as in the linney, as if dead.
I cannot tell how long we went on beside that stream. 'Twas in a wild, uncultivated country; the ground ascended; the stream became narrower and swifter; presently the friendly strip of turf failed altogether, and then we had trouble to keep the cart from upsetting. I went to the pony's head, and Barnaby, going behind the cart, lifted it over the rough places, and sometimes carried his end of it. The night was chilly; my feet were wet with splashing in the brook, and I was growing faint with hunger, when Barnaby called a halt.
'We are now,' he said, 'at the head of the stream. In half an hour, or thereabouts, it will be break of day. Let us rest. Mother, you must eat something. Come, sister, 'tis late for supper, and full early for breakfast. Take some meat and bread and half a cup of cider.'
It is all I remember of that night.