hat question. The unfortunate Mr Bailey had been
thrown sheer over the hedge or the five-barred gate; and was lying in
the neighbouring field, to all appearance dead.

'When I said to-night, that I wished I had never started on this
journey,' cried his master, 'I knew it was an ill-fated one. Look at
this boy!'

'Is that all?' growled Jonas. 'If you call THAT a sign of it--'

'Why, what should I call a sign of it?' asked Montague, hurriedly. 'What
do you mean?'

'I mean,' said Jonas, stooping down over the body, 'that I never heard
you were his father, or had any particular reason to care much about
him. Halloa. Hold up there!'

But the boy was past holding up, or being held up, or giving any other
sign of life than a faint and fitful beating of the heart. After some
discussion the driver mounted the horse which had been least injured,
and took the lad in his arms as well as he could; while Montague and
Jonas, leading the other horse, and carrying a trunk between them,
walked by his side towards Salisbury.

'You'd get there in a few minutes, and be able to send assistance to
meet us, if you went forward, post-boy,' said Jonas. 'Trot on!'

'No, no,' cried Montague; 'we'll keep together.'

'Why, what a chicken you are! You are not afraid of being robbed; are
you?' said Jonas.

'I am not afraid of anything,' replied the other, whose looks and manner
were in flat contradiction to his words. 'But we'll keep together.'

'You were mighty anxious about the boy, a minute ago,' said Jonas. 'I
suppose you know that he may die in the meantime?'

'Aye, aye. I know. But we'll keep together.'

As it was clear that he was not to be moved from this determination,
Jonas made no other rejoinder than such as his face expressed; and they
proceeded in company. They had three or four good miles to travel; and
the way was not made easier by the state of the road, the burden by
which they were embarrassed, or their own stiff and sore condition.
After a sufficiently long and painful walk, they arrived at the Inn; and
having knocked the people up (it being yet very early in the morning),
sent out messengers to see to the carriage and its contents, and roused
a surgeon from his bed to tend the chief sufferer. All the service he
could render, he rendered promptly and skillfully. But he gave it as
his opinion that the boy was labouring under a severe concussion of the
brain, and that Mr Bailey's mortal course was run.

If Montague's