Through the Fray: A Tale of the Luddite Riots by G. A. Henty (best novels to read for beginners .TXT) 📗

arrived; the messenger had told him the nature of the case, and he had come provided with lint, plaster, and bandages.

“Well, Ned,” he asked as he came in, “have you been in the wars again?”

“I am all right, doctor. I had a knock on the head which a day or two will put right; but I fear Bill is very seriously hurt.”

The doctor at once set to to examine the bandages.

“You have done them up very well,” he said approvingly; “but the blood is still oozing from them. I must dress them afresh; get me plenty of hot water, Polly, I have brought a sponge with me. Can you look on without fainting?”

“I don't think I shall faint, sir,” Polly said quietly; “if I do, feyther will take my place.”

In a quarter of an hour the wounds were washed, drawn together, and bandaged. There was but little fresh bleeding, for the lad's stock of life blood had nearly all flowed away.

“A very near case,” the doctor said critically; “as close a shave as ever I saw. Had the wound on the face been a quarter of an inch nearer the eyebrow it would have severed the temporal artery. As it is it has merely laid open the jaw. Neither of the other wounds are serious, though they might very well have been fatal.”

“Then you think he will get round, doctor?” Ned asked in a low tone.

“Get round! Of course he will,” Dr. Green replied cheerily. “Now that we have got him bound up we will soon bring him round. It is only a question of loss of blood.”

“Hullo! this will never do,” he broke off as Ned suddenly reeled and would have fallen to the ground had not Luke caught him.

“Pour this cordial down Swinton's throat, Polly, a little at a time, and lift his head as you do it, and when you see him open his eyes, put a pillow under his head; but don't do so till he begins to come round. Now let me look at Ned's head.

“It must have been a tremendous blow, Luke,” he said seriously. “I, only hope it hasn't fractured the skull. However, all this swelling and suffusion of blood is a good sign. Give me that hot water. I shall put a lancet in here and get it to bleed freely. That will be a relief to him.”

While he was doing this an exclamation of pleasure from Polly showed that Bill was showing signs of returning to life. His eyes presently opened. Polly bent over him.

“Lie quiet, Bill, dear; you have been hurt, but the doctor says you will soon be well again. Yes; Master Ned is all right too. Don't worry yourself about him.”

An hour later both were sleeping quietly.

“They will sleep till morning,” Dr. Green said, “perhaps well on into the day; it is no use my waiting any longer. I will be up the first thing.”

So he drove away, while Polly took her work and sat down to watch the sleepers during the night, and Luke, taking his stick and hat, set off to guard the mill till daylight.

Ned woke first just as daylight was breaking; he felt stupid and heavy, with a splitting pain in his head. He tried to rise, but found that he could not do so. He accordingly told George to go down in an hour's time to Marsden, and to leave a message at the house saying that he was detained and should not be back to breakfast, and that probably he might not return that night. The doctor kept his head enveloped in wet bandages all day, and he was on the following morning able to go down to Marsden, although still terribly pale and shaken. His appearance excited the liveliest wonder and commiseration on the part of Charlie, Lucy, and Abijah; but he told them that he had had an accident, and had got a nasty knock on the back of his head. He kept his room for a day or two; but at the end of that time he was able to go to the mill as usual. Bill Swinton was longer away, but broths and jellies soon built up his strength again, and in three weeks he was able to resume work, although it was long before the ugly scar on his face was healed. The secret was well kept, and although in time the truth of the affair became known in Varley it never reached Marsden, and Ned escaped the talk and comment which it would have excited had it been known, and, what was worse, the official inquiry which would have followed.

The Huddersfield men naturally kept their own council. They had hastily buried their dead comrade on the moor, and although several of them were so severely knocked about that they were unable to go to work for some time, no rumor of the affair got about outside the circle of the conspirators. It need hardly be said that this incident drew Ned and Bill even more closely together than before, and that the former henceforth regarded Bill Swinton in the light of a brother.

At the end of the Christmas holidays Mr. Porson brought home a mistress to the schoolhouse. She was a bright, pleasant woman, and having heard from her husband all the particulars of Ned's case she did her best to make him feel that she fully shared in her husband's welcome whenever he came to the house, and although Ned was some little time in accustoming himself to the presence of one whom he had at first regarded as an intruder in the little circle of his friends, this feeling wore away under the influence of her cordiality and kindness.

“Is it not shocking,” she said to her husband one day, “to think that for nearly a year that poor lad should never have seen his own mother, though she is in the house with him, still worse to know that she thinks him a murderer? Do you think it would be of any good if I were to go and see her, and tell her how wicked and wrong her conduct is?”

“No, my dear,” Mr. Porson said, smiling, “I don't think that course would be at all likely to have a good effect. Green tells me that he is sure that this conviction which she has of Ned's guilt is a deep and terrible grief to her. He thinks that, weak and silly as she is, she has really a strong affection for Ned, as well as for her other children, and it is because this is so that she feels so terribly what she believes to be his guilt. She suffers in her way just as much, or more, than he does in his. He has his business, which occupies his mind and prevents him from brooding over his position; besides, the knowledge that a few of us are perfectly convinced of his innocence enables him to hold up. She has no distraction, nothing to turn her thoughts from this fatal subject.

“Green says she has several times asked him whether a person could be tried twice for the same offense, after he has been acquitted the first time, and he believes that the fear is ever present in her mind that some fresh evidence may be forthcoming which may unmistakably bring the guilt home to him. I have talked it over with Ned several times, and he now takes the same view of it as I do. The idea of his guilt has become a sort of monomania with her, and nothing save the most clear and