In a few minutes Geoffrey came to a great oak, rugged and moss-grown at the roots, which stood near the edge of the ditch that, at the end of the double mound, divided the hedge from the wood. Behind this he took his stand; and Valentine, advancing too rapidly, was stung by a pellet that glanced from a branch and struck his arm. He hastily rushed behind an ash-tree—it was not broad enough to shield him completely; but by its side grew a thicket of bramble and brake fern that helped to hide him from sight. He blazed rapidly at the edge of the oak; in return the shot came rushing through the fern, and scoring the bark of the ash. Suddenly Geoffrey’s fire ceased: the next moment Valentine guessed the truth—that his opponent’s last cartridge was gone—and surely mad with rage stepped from his cover eager to seize the advantage. At the same moment Geoffrey, saying to himself that he would not die like a dog cowering behind a tree, walked out from the oak and faced his doom.
In that second—in the tenth of a second—he saw the sunbeams glance on the levelled barrel, and behind the twin circular orifices of the muzzle the smoke-blackened, frowning brow of the man who once had loved him.
“Fair play in the army!” shouted a hoarse voice, and a long stick of briar suddenly projected from the fern at Valentine’s side fell with a crash upon his barrel. The blow diverted the aim, but the charge exploded. Geoffrey uttered a sharp cry, turned round and put out his hand as if to lean against the oak, and then dropped.
“We used to have fair play in the army,” said Augustus Basset, stepping up from the ditch out of the fern, with a briar in one hand, and a vicious ferret in the other—struggling hard, but dexterously grasped just behind the forelegs, the first finger in front of the legs, so that it could not bite. “You make a ring, look here!” in his incoherent way.
But Valentine, all aghast with sudden revulsion of feeling, had already rushed to his fallen friend and knelt beside him, feeling a pressure upon his heart and a dizziness of sight. For the blood of life was spouting from the right shoulder, and already the yellow fern and the grey grass were spotted and stained, and the lowly creeping ivy streaked with crimson.
“Speak, Geof, old fellow!” cried Valentine, becoming of a more deadly pallor than the wounded man.
“Plug the hole,” said Augustus, who, though he had never seen service, like most old soldiers had some smattering of surgery. “You’ve lost your head. Here, let me. Hold pug;” and he pushed the ferret into Valentine’s hands.
Pulling out his handkerchief, none of the cleanest, Augustus pressed it on the wound, and succeeded in reducing the flow of blood. Geoffrey moved, and Valentine, flinging the ferret aside, held him up.
“Speak to me!” he cried.
“Say not a word how it happened,” Geoffrey replied, thinking of Margaret, and became unconscious again.
There was a rustling of branches and a cracking of dead sticks underfoot, and two men in their shirtsleeves rushed out from the wood.
“By Gaarge, you, Measter Newton, be shot!”
“He won’t die,” said Augustus, looking up, and apparently quite unconcerned. “I put my finger in—it hasn’t touched the artery; look!” He held out his hands, which were soaking red.
The two strong men turned white with a sudden sickness.
“We thought us hearn a scrame,” one said.
“Make a litter,” said Augustus. “There, you great odd-me-dods (scarecrows), you don’t know what it is! A handbarrow, then, you gawnies! What are you staring there for? Go and get your hurdles!”
“Zo us wull; come on, Bill!” and away they ran.
“A man’s made just like a pig inside,” said Augustus to Valentine, and he proceeded to compare the anatomy to heedless ears. Quite sobered by the shock, Basset was of more use than any of them. Long hardened, and indifferent to all but the immediate gratification of his senses with smoke and beer, Augustus had lost all the finer perceptions, and had become not exactly callous, but unimpressionable. That very condition rendered his aid valuable at such a time. Even now, under the crust of stolidity, there were not wanting some better feelings in this wreck of an educated man. He was faithful to the hand that fed him, i.e. to the Greene Ferne people; Geoffrey had frequently given him tobacco and such trifles, and now he was really anxious to do his best. As it was, he had probably saved Geoffrey’s life; for when the last shot was fired, they were so near that the cartridge had only just begun to scatter; had it struck the head or chest with the shot altogether, like a bullet, instant death must have followed. But the blow on the barrel with the stick so far diverted the swift aim of the practised sportsman, that only a part of the charge took effect in the shoulder.
The two men ran as fast as they might across a corner of the wood, crashing through the hazel, and stumbling in their haste as the woodbine caught their heavy shoes. They made straight for a spot about a hundred and fifty yards distant, where on the edge of the meadow land stood a rude shed, framed of logs and slabs, thatched with
