By this time Joe himself had come to a sense of his recklessness.  He gripped me by the hand, and dragged me down the hill at so fierce a pace that in half a minute all the breath was out of my body.  I wondered what he purposed doing, for the barrel was now out of sight past the bend, and could scarce have been overtaken by the wearer of the seven league boots.  But as we turned into the straight again, just by Andrew Cruddle, the saddler’s, we again espied the terrible barrel, rolling with many bumps towards the head of the bridge.

And then I verily believe that my heart for some seconds ceased to beat, and I am sure that Joe shared my dismay, for he tightened the grip of his great strong hand upon my puny one until I could have sworn it was crushed to a pulp.  At the bridge head were two gentlemen, who had to all appearance been engaged in chatting, for one still sat on the parapet, while the other stood within a foot or two of him.  They were not talking now, but gazing at the barrel rolling down towards them, and the one who was seated wore the trace of a smile upon his face.

But the other—­Heaven knows what terror seized me when my eyes lighted upon him:  it was none other than Joshua Vetch, the father of the boy who, as I feared, was being churned to a jelly; and he stood full in the path of the barrel.

Mr. Vetch, as I have said, was a small but corpulent man, and stood very upright, with a slight backward inclination, to balance, I suppose, the exceeding greatness of his rotundity.  His countenance habitually expressed disapproval, and his shaggy brows were drawn down now in an angry frown.  I perceived that he said something to his companion, and then I saw no more for a while, a mist seeming to gather before my eyes.

When I regained possession of my faculties, dreading what might have happened, I found myself on the skirts of a group of five or six, and heard the loud voice of Mr. Vetch bellowing forth words which, for modesty’s sake, I forbid my pen to write.  He was not dead, then, I thought, nor even hurt, or assuredly he would not have had the strength to curse with such vigor.  But what of Cyrus?

“I’ll have the law on the villain!  Run for a potticary!  D’you hear, you gaping jackass?  Run for Mr. Pinhorn and bid him come here!”

And then followed a string of oaths like to those I had heard before.  The group parted hastily, and out came Dick Cludde, with a face as white as milk, and sped up the town as fast as his long legs would carry him.  No doubt he was the “gaping jackass” whom Mr. Vetch had so addressed in his fury.

Pushing my way through the townsmen who had gathered, and whose numbers were swelled every moment by the afflux of aproned grocers, and potboys, and ’prentices, and others from the streets, I saw Cyrus laid on his back by the parapet, white and still, his father pacing heavily up and down, and his friend Captain Galsworthy fending off the prying onlookers with his cane.