“He was going down the drop.  Captain Delamere was to push him off, which he did with a vengeance.  He didn’t mean any harm, though he don’t like a bone in poor Bertie’s body.  However, the toboggin snapped in two from the concussion in landing.  Bertie was shot out and rolled to the bottom, which would not have mattered, only he struck his head against some snag or stone hidden by the snow.  We looked down, but he didn’t seem to move, and we got frightened.  I had had nearly enough jumping, but I took Captain Delamere on my toboggin—­didn’t trust him to steer, I can tell you, my dear—­and bumped down quite safe.  Bertie was insensible, with a queer cut on his forehead; so I extracted the solitaire out of his shirt-collar, and Captain Delamere gave him a nip out of his pocket-pistol, and then he seemed to pull himself together and sat up.  A lot of people had collected round, and Mr. Vavasour asked me to come and tell you.  Oh, here he is.”

“Miss Rolleston,” said Jack, “Du Meresq is nearly all right again.  But he has twisted his ankle, and can’t walk up the hill; so they are going to pull him up on a toboggin.  I’ll go and get your sleigh.”

“Are you sure it is nothing worse?” said Cecil, who could scarcely abandon her first impression that his neck was broken.

“Quite.  There he is, to answer for himself,” as Bertie and his bearers crested the hill.

She walked to meet them.  Du Meresq looked in pain, but cut short all enquiries.  “Wrenched my foot that’s all.  You want to go, don’t you, Cecil?”

“Oh, yes; as soon as possible.  Lilla, Mrs. Armstrong is so far off, will you make our adieux?” Sotto voce. “She is a tiresome old goose; but I left her so abruptly just now.”

“Miss Rolleston,” whispered Jack, who had just brought up the cutter, “I think I’ll send up the doctor from the barracks.  Du Meresq did get a baddish cut on the head, and, if he doesn’t stay in a day or two, it might turn to erysipelas in this climate.”

“Pray do.  Oh, Mr. Vavasour! just tell me honestly, is not that sometimes—­fatal when it gets to the head?”

Cecil’s eyes, dilated with terror, betrayed her to Jack, over whose honest face came an expression of sympathy and intelligence.

“Of course; but we will take care of that.  That’s why I am sending up the doctor, to prevent him exposing himself out of doors just yet.”

Cecil did not find the drive back so agreeable as the previous one.  Du Meresq, chafing at the confinement his fast swelling foot would probably entail, and provoked at coming to grief after Lilla’s taunt was in remarkably bad humour.

Cecil saw the state of the case, and drove on fast, philosophically allowing him to grumble and growl without much concerning herself; but it was almost dark before they drew up at “The Maples.”

In the meantime, Colonel Rolleston, having heard from Miss Prosody that his daughter and Du Meresq had gone off to a toboggining party, chose to be highly scandalized, and poured into the placid ear of his wife a torrent of disapprobation.