The Revellers Part 22

"You know Angle Saumarez?" said the girl suddenly.

"Yes."

He ceased beating the bushes and looked at her fixedly, the question was so unexpected. Yet Angle had asked him the selfsame question concerning Elsie Herbert. One girl resembled another as two peas in a pod.

"Do you like her?"

"I think I do, sometimes."

"Do you think she is pretty?"

"Yes, often."

"What do you mean by 'sometimes,' 'often?' How can a girl be pretty--'often'?"

"Well, you see, I think she is nice in many ways, and that if--she knew you--and copied your manner--your voice, and style, and behavior--she would improve very greatly."

Martin had recovered his wits. Elsie t.i.ttered and blushed slightly.

"Really!" she said, and recommenced the kicking process with ardor.

Suddenly, with a fierce snarl, an animal of some sort flew at her. She had a momentary vision of a pair of blazing eyes, bared teeth, and extended claws. She screamed and turned her head. In that instant a wildcat landed on her back and a vicious claw reached for her face. But Martin was at her side. Without a second's hesitation he seized the growling brute in both hands and tore it from off her shoulders. His right hand was around its neck, but he strove in vain to grasp the small of its back in the left. It wriggled and scratched with the ferocity of an undersized tiger. Martin's coat sleeves and s.h.i.+rt were slashed to shreds, his waistcoat was rent, and deep gashes were cut in his arms, but he held on gamely.

Mr. Herbert and the others ran up, but came unarmed. They had not even a stick. The vicar, with some presence of mind, rushed back and wrenched a leg from the camp table, but by the time he returned the cat was moving its limbs in its final spasms, for Martin had choked it to death.

The vicar danced about with his improvised weapon, imploring the boy to "throw it down and let me whack the life out of it," but Martin was enraged with the pain and the damage to his clothing. In his anger he felt that he could wrench the wretched beast limb from limb, and he might have endeavored to do that very thing were it not for the presence of Elsie Herbert. As it was, when the cat fell to the ground its struggles had ended, but Mr. Herbert gave it a couple of hearty blows to make sure.

It was a tremendous brute, double the size of its domestic progenitors.

At one period in its career it had been caught in a rabbit trap, for one of its forelegs was removed at the joint, and the calloused stump was hard as a bit of stone.

A chorus of praise for Martin's prompt.i.tude and courage was cut short when he took the table leg and went back to the clump of gorse.

"I thought it was curious that there were no rabbits here," he said.

"Now I know why. This cat has a litter of kittens hidden among the whins."

"Are you gug-gug-going to kuk-kuk-kill them?" sobbed Elsie.

He paused in his murderous search.

"It makes no matter now," he said, laughing. "I'll tell the keeper.

Wildcats eat up an awful lot of game."

His coolness, his absolute disregard of the really serious cuts he had received, were astounding to the town-bred men. The vicar was the first to recover some degree of composure.

"Martin," he cried, "come this instant and have your wounds washed and bound up. You are losing a great deal of blood, and that brute's claws may have been venomous."

The boy obeyed at once. He presented a sorry spectacle. His arms and hands were bathed in blood and his clothes were splashed with it.

Elsie Herbert's eyes filled with tears.

"This is nothing," he said to cheer her. "They're only scratches, but they look bad."

As a matter of fact, he did not realize until long afterwards that were it not for the fortunate accident which deprived the cat of her off foreleg, some of the tendons of his right wrist might have been severed.

From the manner in which he held her she could not get the effective claws to bear crosswise.

The vicar looked grave when a first dip in the brook revealed the extent of the boy's injuries.

"You are plucky enough to bear the application of a little brine, Martin?" he said.

Suiting the action to the word, he emptied the contents of a paper of salt into a teacup and dissolved it in hot water. Then he washed the wounds again in the brook and bound them with handkerchiefs soaked in the mixture. It was a rough-and-ready cauterization, and the pain made Martin white, but later on it earned the commendation of the doctor. Mr.

Herbert was pallid himself when Elsie handed him the last handkerchief they could muster, while Mrs. Johnson was already tearing the tablecloth into strips.

"It is bad enough to have your wrists scored in this way, my lad," he murmured, "but it will be some consolation for you to know that otherwise these cuts would have been in my little girl's face, perhaps her eyes--great Heaven!--her eyes!"

The vicar could have chosen no better words. Martin's heart throbbed with pride. At last the bandages were secured and the tattered sleeve turned down. All this consumed nearly half an hour, and then Martin remembered a forgotten duty.

"What time is it?" he said anxiously.

"A quarter past five."

"Oh, bother!" he murmured. "I'll get into another row. I have missed my Bible lesson."

"Your Bible lesson?"

"Yes, sir. My father makes me read a portion of Scripture every day."

The vicar pa.s.sed unnoticed the boy's unconsciously resentful tone. He sighed, but straightway resumed his wonted cheeriness.

"There will be no row to-day, Martin," he promised. "We shall escort you home in triumphal procession. We leave the things here for my man, who will bring a pony and cart in a few minutes. Now, you two, tie the hind legs of that beast with a piece of string and carry it on the stick. The cat is Martin's _spolia opima_. Here, Elsie, guide your warrior's faltering footsteps down the glen."

They all laughed, but by the time they reached the White House the boy was ready to drop, for he had lost a quant.i.ty of blood, and the torment of the saline solution was becoming intolerable.

John Bolland, after waiting with growing impatience long after the appointed time, closed the Bible with a bang and went downstairs.

"What's wrang wi' ye now?" inquired his spouse as he dropped morosely into a chair and answered but sourly a hearty greeting from a visitor.

"Where's that lad?" he growled.

"Martin. Hasn't he come yam?"

She trembled for her adopted son's remissness on this, the first day after the great rebellion.

"Yam!"--with intense bitterness--"he's not likely te hearken te t' Word when he's encouraged in guile."

"Eh, but there's some good cause this time," cried the old lady, more fl.u.s.tered than she cared to show. "Happen he's bin asked to see t'

squire again."

"T' squire left Elmsdale afore noon," was the gruff reply.