at he might look the easier at her, a
half-humorous admiration in his eyes. "Sweet, you beggar my vocabulary. As
the goddess of healing you are divine."

The flush of alarmed maiden modesty flooded her cheek.

"You are to lie still, else the wound will break out again," she said
sharply.

"Faith, it has broken out," he feebly laughed, pretending to
misunderstand. Then, "Oh, you mean the sword cut. 'Twould never open after
it has been dressed by so fair a leech."

The girl looked studiously out of the coach window and made no answer.
Now, weak as I was--in pain and near to death, my head on her lap with her
dear hand to cool my fevered brow--yet was I fool enough to grow insanely
jealous that she had used her kerchief to bind his wound. His pale,
handsome face was so winning and his eyes so beautiful that they thrust me
through the heart as his sword had been unable to do.

He looked at me with an odd sort of friendliness, the respect one man has
for another who has faced death without flinching.

"Egad, Montagu, had either of us driven but a finger's breadth to left we
had made sure work and saved the doctors a vast deal of pother. I doubt
'twill be all to do over again one day. Where did you learn that mad lunge
of yours? I vow 'tis none of Angelo's teaching. No defense would avail
against such a fortuitous stroke. Methought I had you speeding to kingdom
come, and Lard! you skewered me bravely. 'Slife, 'tis an uncertain world,
this! Here we ride back together to the inn and no man can say which of us
has more than he can carry."

All this with his easy dare-devil smile, though his voice was faint from
weakness. An odd compound of virtues and vices this man! I learnt
afterwards that he had insisted on my wounds being dressed before he would
let them touch him, though he was bleeding greatly.

But I had no mind for badinage, and I turned my face from him sullenly.
Silence fell till we jolted into the courtyard of "The Jolly Soldier,"
where Creagh, Macdonald, and Hamish Gorm, having dismounted from their
horses, waited to carry us into the house. We were got to bed at once, and
our wounds looked to more carefully. By an odd chance Volney and I were
put in the same room, the inn being full, and the Macdonald nursed us
both, Creagh being for the most part absent in London on business
connected with the rising.

Lying there day after day, the baronet and I came in time to an odd liking
for each other, discussing ou