“Don’t!” Lawrence dragged her off, but too late:  the Dane’s teeth had snapped on her wrist.  The next moment he was lying on his side with his brains beaten out.  Lawrence was willing to spare his own enemy but not Isabel’s.

“Oh,” said Isabel, shivering and moaning, “oh, my poor old Billy!”

“Damn your poor old Billy,” said Lawrence:  “let me look at your arm.”

He carried her indoors, leaving Janaway and his wife and the Dane lying scattered on the sunlit turf.  He did not care one straw whether they lived or died.  In the little front parlour, neat and fresh with its window full of white muslin and red geraniums, he laid Isabel on a sofa and rolled up her sleeve:  the flesh was not much torn but the Dane’s fangs had sunk in deep and clean.  “How far are we from a doctor?”

“Four miles.  Why?  Billy wasn’t mad.  I shall be all right directly.  May I have some water to drink?”

“Curse these country hamlets,” said Lawrence.  He could not carry her four miles, nor was she fit to walk so far:  but to fetch help would mean an hour or so’s delay.  He went into the kitchen to filla tumbler from the pump, and found an iron wash-bowl in Clara Janaway’s neat sink, and a kettle boiling on the hob beside a saucepan of potatoes that she had been cooking for dinner.  Isabel sat up and took the glass from his hand.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, raising her beautiful dark eyes in a diffident apology.  “It was all my own fault.”  Lawrence slipped a cushion under her head and drew her gently down.  “Oh, thank you!  But please don’t trouble about me.  I do feel rather queer.”  Lawrence thought it probable.  He had been bitten by a dog himself and knew how horribly such a wound smarts.  “It was all so—­so very dreadful.  But I shall be all right directly..  Do go back to the others:  I’m afraid poor Clara—­oh! oh, Captain Hyde!  What are you doing?”

“Set your teeth and shut your eyes,” said Lawrence “it won’t take long.  Your beloved Billy wasn’t a nice animal to be bitten by.  No, he wasn’t mad, but his teeth weren’t very clean, and we don’t want blood poisoning to set up.  Steady now.”  He pressed his lips to her arm.

Isabel’s hand lay lax in his grasp while he methodically sucked the wound and rinsed his mouth from her tumbler.  He hurt her, but she had been bred to accept pain philosophically.  “Is it done?” she asked meekly when he released her.  “Not any more?”

“No, that’s enough.  Now for a drop of warm water.”  He bathed the wound thoroughly and in default of a better dressing bound it up with his own handkerchief.  “I wish I had some brandy to give you, but there isn’t a drop in the place.  Your estimable friend appears to have been a teetotaller.  I don’t doubt he was a pattern of all the virtues.—­ But for that matter I couldn’t give the child publichouse stuff.—­ Now, my little friend, if you’ll lie quiet for five minutes, I’ll see what’s going on outside.”