Presently, however, her trance left her and she ran up, flung herself upon her knees, and looked at her former lover, whose face and head were now a mass of blood. “He is dead,” she wailed; “he is dead, and I have killed him! Oh, Edward! Edward!” Mr. Quest turned on her savagely; so savagely that one might almost have thought he feared lest in her agony she should say something further. “Stop that,” he said, seizing her arm, “and go for the doctor, for if he is not dead he will soon bleed to death.” With an effort she rose, put her hand to her forehead, and then ran like the wind down the garden and through the little door. CHAPTER XXX. HAROLD TAKES THE NEWS Mr. Quest and Harold bore the bleeding man—whether he was senseless or dead they knew not—into the house and laid him on the sofa. Then, having despatched a servant to seek a second doctor in case the one already gone for was out, they set to work to cut the clothes from his neck and arm, and do what they could, and that was little enough, towards staunching the bleeding. It soon, however, became evident that Cossey had only got the outside portion of the charge of No. 7 that is to say, he had been struck by about a hundred pellets of the three or four hundred which would go to the ordinary ounce and an eighth. Had he received the whole charge he must, at that distance, have been instantly killed. As it was, the point of the shoulder was riddled, and so to a somewhat smaller extent was the back of his neck and the region of the right ear. One or two outside pellets had also struck the head higher up, and the skin and muscles along the back were torn by the passage of shot. “By Jove!” said Mr. Quest, “I think he is done for.” The Colonel nodded. He had some experience of shot wounds, and the present was not of a nature to encourage hope of the patient’s survival. “How did it happen?” asked Mr. Quest presently, as he mopped up the streaming blood with a sponge. “It was an accident,” groaned the Colonel. “Your wife was looking at my new gun. I told her it was loaded, and that she must be careful, and I thought she had put it down. The next thing that I heard was the report. It is all my cursed fault for leaving the cartridges in.” “Ah,” said Mr. Quest. “She always thought she understood guns. It is a shocking accident.” Just then one of the doctors, followed by Belle Quest, ran up the lawn carrying a box of instruments, and in another minute was at work. He was a quick and skilful surgeon, and having announced that the patient was not dead, at once began to tie one of the smaller arteries in the throat, which had been pierced, and through which Edward Cossey was rapidly bleeding to death. By the time that this was done the other doctor, an older man, put in an appearance, and together they made a rapid examination of the injuries.