"We used to have fair play in the army," said Augustus Basset, stepping up from the ditch out of the fern, with a briar in one hand, and a vicious ferret in the other--struggling hard, but dexterously grasped just behind the forelegs, the first finger in front of the legs, so that it could not bite. "You make a ring, look here!" in his incoherent way. But Valentine, all aghast with sudden revulsion of feeling, had already rushed to his fallen friend and knelt beside him, feeling a pressure upon his heart and a dizziness of sight. For the blood of life was spouting from the right shoulder, and already the yellow fern and the grey grass were spotted and stained, and the lowly creeping ivy streaked with crimson. "Speak, Geof, old fellow!" cried Valentine, becoming of a more deadly pallor than the wounded man. "Plug the hole," said Augustus, who, though he had never seen service, like most old soldiers had some smattering of surgery. "You've lost your head. Here, let me. Hold pug;" and he pushed the ferret into Valentine's hands. Pulling out his handkerchief, none of the cleanest, Augustus pressed it on the wound, and succeeded in reducing the flow of blood. Geoffrey moved, and Valentine, flinging the ferret aside, held him up. "Speak to me!" he cried. "Say not a word how it happened," Geoffrey replied, thinking of Margaret, and became unconscious again. There was a rustling of branches and a cracking of dead sticks underfoot, and two men in their shirt-sleeves rushed out from the wood. "By Gaarge, you, Measter Newton, be shot!" "He won't die," said Augustus, looking up, and apparently quite unconcerned. "I put my finger in--it hasn't touched the artery; look!" He held out his hands, which were soaking red. The two strong men turned white with a sudden sickness. "We thought us hearn a scrame," one said. "Make a litter," said Augustus. "There, you great odd-me-dods [scarecrows], you don't know what it is! A hand-barrow, then, you gawnies! What are you staring there for? Go and get your hurdles!" "Zo us wull; come on, Bill!" and away they ran.