t
father's big clay-pipe, rammed it full of tobacco out of his great lead
box, and then took it into the back kitchen, feeling as grand as a
churchwarden, and set to and smoked it till I turned giddy and faint,
and the place seemed swimming about me.

Now, that was just how I felt when I crawled about in that place, trying
not to meet anybody, lest the women should see me all covered with
blood; and at last I got, as I thought, into a room where I should be
all alone.

I say I crawled; and that's what I did do, on one hand and my knees, the
fingers of my broken arm trailing over the white marble floor, with each
finger making a horrible red mark, when all at once I stopped, drew
myself up stiffly, and leaned trembling and dizzy up against the wall,
trying hard not to faint. For I found that I wasn't alone, and that in
place of getting away--crawling into some hole to lie down and die, I
was that low-spirited and weak--I had come to a place where one of the
women was, for there, upon her knees, was Lizzy Green, sobbing and
crying, and tossing her hands about in the agony of her poor heart.

I was misty, and faint, and confused, you know; but perhaps it was
something like instinct made me crawl to Lizzy's favourite place, for it
was not intended. She did not see me, for her back was my way; and I
did not mean her to know I was there; for in spite of my giddiness, I
seemed to feel that she had learned all the news about our sortie, and
that she was crying about poor Harry Lant.

"And he deserves to be cried for, poor chap," I said to myself, for I
forgot all about my own pains then; but all the same something very dark
and bitter came over me, as I wished that she had been crying instead
for poor me.

"But then he was always so bright, and merry, and clever," I thought,
"and just the man who would make his way with a woman; while I--Please
God, let me die now!" I whispered to myself directly after, "for I'm
only a poor, broken, helpless object, in everybody's way."

It seemed just then as if the hot weak tears that came running out of my
eyes made me clearer, and better able to hear all that the sobbing girl
said, as I leaned closer and closer to the wall; while, as to the sharp
pain every word she said gave me, the dull dead aching of my broken arm
was nothing.

"Why--why did they let him go?" the poor girl sobbed, "as if there were
not enough to be killed without him; and him so brave, and stout, and
handsome