It was a singular piece of good luck that the two children with the milk-can should have met Dr. Hallahan riding homewards down a lane after an ineffectual search for the hounds. It was also fortunate that it being, so to speak, but the third hour of the day, he was perfectly, almost dismally sober. It was barely a quarter of an hour before he was unfastening Hugh’s waistcoat and feeling him all over, while Lady Susan stood silently by. She had found water in a ditch, and brought it in her hat; she stood motionless, with her fashionable head bare to the mist, and when Dr. Hallahan looked up at her he was aware that a handsomer and more haggardly-set face had never waited for his verdict.{184} “He’s badly hurt, Lady French,” he said, his brogue rough with compassion for her; “he seems to have a couple of ribs broken, and there’s probably concussion too, and it might be a bit of a crush under the horse.”
“Oh!” said Lady Susan stonily. Then, her brain travelling slowly on, “Can we carry him between us? He only weighs nine six.”
As she spoke she saw that Bunbury, Slaney, and others were hurrying towards them; it did not surprise her, everything seems to be drawn naturally into the suction of disaster.
Afterwards she realized that it was a long time before a messenger returned with a blue counterpane, and other messengers with a couple of rails from a wooden paling. A species of hammock was made, and Hugh was, with utmost care, laid in it; she noticed that Dr. Hallahan told the bearers not to walk in step. Then Bunbury led up Slaney’s horse, and told her she must get{185} on to it, that she was not able to walk. Bunbury was white and silent; Slaney’s eyes were moist, and her voice unsteady. She seemed to Lady Susan extraordinarily kind.
They made her drink some whisky out of his flask, and she rode on after the hammock down a sheep-track, along a bohireen that was like the bed of a rocky stream, into yet another endless bohireen. Slaney walked beside her; they did not speak, but she knew that Slaney was sorry for her. It made her quite sure that Hugh was dying.
“Where are the hounds?” she said suddenly. “Are they killed too?”
“Dan’s got them,” Bunbury answered; “the fox went down one of the clefts in that field, and Fisherman and Mexico went after him. The others are all right.”
Lady Susan rode on in silence, and Bunbury, leading his horse, walked by Slaney. It was quite unnecessary that he should walk, yet Slaney understood.
They neared at length a white house with fir-trees round it; there was a back{186} entrance into the lane, and the ha............