o, speechless, and with his
head hanging, continued to support himself on his hand. A patch of
blood, bright-coloured, was growing slowly on his vest: and there was
blood on his lips.

"Oh, whirra, whirra, what'll I do?" the Irishman exclaimed, helplessly
wringing his hands. "What'll I do for him? He's murdered entirely!"

Payton, aided by one of the troopers, was putting on his coat and vest.
He paused to bid the other help the gentleman. Then, with a cold look
at the fallen man, for whom, though they had been friends, as friends
go in the world, he seemed to have no feeling except one of contempt,
he walked away in the direction of the rear of the house.

By the time he reached the back door the alarm was abroad, the maids
were running to and fro and screaming, and on the threshold he
encountered Flavia. Pale as the stricken man, she looked on Payton with
an eye of horror, and, as he stood aside to let her pass, she
drew--unconscious what she did--her skirts away, that they might not
touch him.

He went on, with rage in his heart. "Very good, my lady," he muttered,
"very good! But I've not done with you yet. I know a way to pull your
pride down. And I'll go about it!"

He might have moved less at ease, he might have spoken less
confidently, had he, before he retired from the scene of the fight,
cast one upward glance in the direction of the house, had he marked an
opening high up in the wall of yew, and noticed through that opening a
window, so placed that it alone of all the windows in the house
commanded the scene of action. For then he would have discovered at
that casement a face he knew, and a pair of stern eyes that had
followed the course of the struggle throughout, noted each separate
attack, and judged the issue--and the man.

And he might have taken warning.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PITCHER AT THE WELL

The surgeon of that day was better skilled in letting blood than in
staunching it, in cupping than in curing. It was well for Luke Asgill,
therefore, that none lived nearer than distant Tralee. It was still
more fortunate for him that there was one in the house to whom the
treatment of such a wound as his was an everyday matter, and who was
guided in his practice less by the rules of the faculty than by those
of experience and common sense.

Even under his care Asgill's life hung for many hours in the balance.
There was a time, when he was at his weakest, when his breath, in the
old phrase, wo