Walker. At first the tidings had been
gloomy enough. The doctor had only been able to say that he needn't
die because of his broken bones. Then late in the afternoon there
arrived a surgeon from London who gave something of a stronger hope.
The young man's consciousness had come back to him, and he had
expressed an appreciation for brandy and water. It was this fact
which had seemed so promising to young Lord Hautboy. On the Saturday
there came Mrs. Walker and Miss Walker, and before the Sunday evening
it was told how the patient had signified his intention of hunting
again on the first possible opportunity. "I always knew he was a
brick," said Hautboy, as he repeated the story, "because he always
would ride at everything."

"I don't think he'll ever ride again at the fence just out of
Gimberley Wood," said Lord Hampstead. They were all able to start on
the Monday morning without serious concern, as the accounts from the
injured man's bed-room were still satisfactory. That he had broken
three ribs, a collar-bone, and an arm seemed to be accounted as
nothing. Nor was there much made of the scalp wound on his head,
which had come from a kick the horse gave him in the struggle. As his
brains were still there, that did not much matter. His cheek had been
cut open by a stake on which he fell, but the scar, it was thought,
would only add to his glories. It was the pressure of the horse which
had fallen across his body which the doctors feared. But Hautboy very
rightly argued that there couldn't be much danger, seeing that he had
recovered his taste for brandy and water. "If it wasn't for that,"
said Hautboy, "I don't think I'd have gone away and left him."

Lord Hampstead found, when he reached home on the Monday morning,
that his troubles were not yet over. The housekeeper came out and
wept, almost with her arms round his neck. The groom, and the
footman, and the gardener, even the cowboy himself, flocked about
him, telling stories of the terrible condition in which they had been
left after the coming of the Quaker on the Friday evening. "I didn't
never think I'd ever see my lord again," said the cook solemnly. "I
didn't a'most hope it," said the housemaid, "after hearing the Quaker
gentleman read it all out of the newspaper." Lord Hampstead shook
hands with them all, and laughed at the misfortune of the false
telegram, and endeavoured to be well pleased with everything, but
it occurred to him to think what must have been