‘Is it so unusual for an exile to yearn towards the land of his birth--especially an he envisage a prospect to combine some business with pleasure there? But I see you do not believe me. Well, Sir, bruised and battered though I be, I would sooner be put to lie out in the fields than accept a bounty offered on such terms. Or would you be the treacherous husbandman of the fable, with whom the poor driven fox took shelter, and keep me here, to point out to the hunt my hiding-place? It may ride up anon. Be sure those bloody miscreants will rouse the neighbourhood, and there will be search for me. Well, I am sick and friendless and at your mercy.’ He had spoken from the first in a voice weak and languid, though always oddly preserving its dry particularity, and now sank back as if exhausted, closing his eyes. But still Brion regarded him unmoved, it seemed, by either his explanations or his taunts. Something, he felt, rang false--he could not say what, but it certainly was not the man’s physical hurts, which were very definite and serious. There was reality enough in them to outweigh for the moment any thought of moral deception. One in particular on the side, the result of a terrible blow from a metal bar or stone, bore a sinister look. No rib, so far as he could ascertain, was fractured, but he feared some bad internal injury. He had done, and he did hereafter, all that he could to alleviate the suffering caused by this injury, using what soft compresses and tender balsams he could filch from Mother Harlock’s preserves; but still the pain did not seem to mend, and its persistence troubled him. Supposing the man were to die on his hands, to what unresolvable difficulties would he not have committed himself? However, the thing was done, and might God help him in having acted humanely on impulse instead of discreetly on reflection.