‘He’s got it!’ he muttered in a hoarse whisper.  ’You had better—­get a surgeon.  You’ll bear me out,’ he continued, looking round eagerly, ’he began it.  He flung it in my face.  By God—­it may go near to hanging me!’

Sir George and the landlord pushed by him and went in.  The room was lighted by one candle, burning smokily on the high mantelshelf; the other lay overturned and extinguished in the folds of a tablecloth which had been dragged to the floor.  On a wooden chair beside the bare table sat Mr. Pomeroy, huddled chin to breast, his left hand pressed to his side, his right still resting on the hilt of his small-sword.  His face was the colour of chalk, and a little froth stood on his lips; but his eyes, turned slightly upwards, still followed his rival with a grim fixed stare.  Sir George marked the crimson stain on his lips, and raising his hand for silence—­for the servants were beginning to crowd in with exclamations of horror—­knelt down beside the chair, ready to support him in case of need.  “They are fetching a surgeon,” he said.  “He will be here in a minute.”

Mr. Pomeroy’s eyes left the door, through which Dunborough had disappeared, and for a few seconds they dwelt unwinking on Sir George:  but for a while he said nothing.  At length, “Too late,” he whispered.  “It was my boots—­I slipped, or I’d have gone through him.  I’m done.  Pay Tamplin—­five pounds I owe him.”

Soane saw that it was only a matter of minutes, and he signed to the landlord, who was beginning to lament, to be silent.

“If you can tell me where the girl is—­in two words,” he said gently, “will you try to do so?”

The dying man’s eyes roved over the ring of faces.  “I don’t know,” he whispered, so faintly that Soane had to bring his ear very near his lips.  “The parson—­was to have got her to Tamplin’s—­for me.  He put her in the wrong carriage.  He’s paid.  And—­I’m paid.”

With the last word the small-sword fell clinking to the floor.  The dying man drew himself up, and seemed to press his hand more and more tightly to his side.  For a brief second a look of horror—­as if the consciousness of his position dawned on his brain—­awoke in his eyes.  Then he beat it down.  “Tamplin’s staunch,” he muttered.  “I must stand by Tamplin.  I owe—­pay him five pounds for—­”

A gush of blood stopped his utterance.  He gasped and with a groan but no articulate word fell forward in Soane’s arms.  Bully Pomeroy had lost his last stake!

Not this time the spare thousands the old squire, good saving man, had left on bond and mortgage; not this time the copious thousands he had raised himself for spendthrift uses:  nor the old oaks his great-grand-sire had planted to celebrate His Majesty’s glorious Restoration:  nor the Lelys and Knellers that great-grand-sire’s son, shrewd old connoisseur, commissioned:  not this time the few hundreds hardly squeezed of late from charge and jointure, or wrung from the unwilling hands of friends—­but life; life, and who shall say what besides life!