d you, Batchelor? Drive on now,
Whipcord, and get out of this narrow street."

With much persuasion Whipcord resumed his coat and seized the reins.

"Thinks I don't know the way to drive," he growled. "I'll teach him!"

I had been standing up, adding my endeavours to Hawkesbury's to pacify
our companion, when he suddenly lashed furiously at the horse. The
wretched animal, already irritated beyond endurance, gave a wild bound
forward, which threw me off my feet, and before I could put out a hand
to save myself pitched me backwards into the road.

I was conscious of falling with a heavy crash against the kerb with my
arm under me, and of seeing the dogcart tearing down the street. Then
everything seemed dark, and I remember nothing more.

When I did recover consciousness I was lying in a strange room on a
strange bed. It took an effort to remember what had occurred. But a
dull pain all over reminded me, and gradually a more acute and intense
pain on my left side. I tried to move my arm, but it was powerless, and
the exertion almost drove back my half-returning senses.

"Lie quiet," said a voice at my side, "the doctor will be here
directly."

The voice was somehow familiar; but in my weak state I could not
remember where I had heard it. And the exertion of turning my head to
look was more than I could manage.

I lay there, I don't know how long, with half-closed eyes, seeing
nothing, hearing nothing, and feeling only the pain and an occasional
grateful passing of a wet sponge across my forehead.

Then I became aware of more people in the room and a man's voice
saying--

"How was it?"

"I found him lying on the pavement. I think he must have been thrown
out of a vehicle."

That voice I had certainly heard, but where?

"It's the arm--broken!" said the voice.

"Ah," said the doctor, leaning over me and touching me lightly near the
elbow.

I groaned with agony as he did so.

"Go round to the other side," said he, hurriedly. "I must examine where
the fracture is. I'm afraid, from what you say, it must be rather a bad
one."

I just remembered catching sight of a well-known face bending over me,
and a familiar voice whispering--

"Steady, old man, try to bear it."

The next moment I had fainted.

It may have been minutes or it may have been hours before I next came to
myself, and then my arm lay bandaged by my side, and the sharpness of
the pain had gone.

"Fred, old man," was the first th