Looking across the field in front of us, towards which he pointed, I could see nothing. I mean, nothing likely to have shot him. No men, no guns. Off to the left, partly buried amidst its grounds, lay the old house called the Granary; to the right in the distance, Vale Farm. The little child was stretched on the ground, quiet now, her head resting on his right shoulder; it was the left side that was injured. Suddenly he whispered a few words to her; she sprang up with a sob and darted into the wood. The child, as we heard later, had been sent out by her mother to look for her father: it was in seeking for him that she had come upon our tea-party and peeped at us. Later, she found him, fallen where he was now, just after the shot which struck him was fired. In her terror she was flying off for assistance, and met me. The man's hat lay near him, also an old drab-coloured bag, some tin basins, and a Dutch-oven. "Can I move you, to put you easier?" I asked between his groans. "Can I do anything in the world to help you?" "No, no, don't touch me," he said, in a hopeless tone. "I am bleeding to death." And I thought he was. His cheeks and lips were growing paler with every minute. The man's diction was as good as mine; and, tramp though he was, many a gentleman has not half as nice a face as his. "If you don't mind being left, I will run for a doctor--old Featherston." Before he could answer yes or no, Harry Vale, who must have espied us from their land, came running up. "Why--what in the world----" he began. "Is it you, North? What? Shot, you say?" "From over yonder, sir; and I've got my death-blow: I think I have. Perhaps if Featherston----" "I'll fetch him," cried Harry Vale. "You stay here with him, Johnny." And he darted away like a lamplighter, his long legs skimming the grass. I am nothing but a muff; you know that of old. And never did I feel my own deficiencies come home to me as they did then. Any one else might have known how to stop the bleeding--for of course it ought to be stopped--if only by stuffing a handkerchief into the wound. I did not dare attempt it; I was worse at any kind of surgery than a born imbecile. All in a moment, as I stood there, the young gipsy-woman's words of the morning flashed into my mind. She had foreseen some ill for him, she said; had scented it in the air. How strange it seemed! The next to come upon the scene was the Squire, crushing through the brambles when he heard our voices. He and Sir John, in dire wrath at our flight, had come out to look for us and to marshal us back for the start home. I gave him a few whispered words of explanation. "What!" cried he. "Dying?" and his face went as pale as the man's. "Oh, my poor fellow, I am sorry for this!"