“By the Lord, I believe thou hast an eye to the pretty Puritan thyself, Master Harry,” says my lord, with his reckless, good-humored laugh, and as if he had been listening with interest to the passionate appeal of the young man.  “Whisper, Harry.  Art thou in love with her thyself?  Hath tipsy Frank Esmond come by the way of all flesh?”

“My lord, my lord,” cried Harry, his face flushing and his eyes filling as he spoke, “I never had a mother, but I love this lady as one.  I worship her as a devotee worships a saint.  To hear her name spoken lightly seems blasphemy to me.  Would you dare think of your own mother so, or suffer any one so to speak of her?  It is a horror to me to fancy that any man should think of her impurely.  I implore you, I beseech you, to leave her.  Danger will come out of it.”

“Danger, psha!” says my lord, giving a cut to the horses, which at this minute—­for we were got on to the Downs—­fairly ran off into a gallop that no pulling could stop.  The rein broke in Lord Mohun’s hands, and the furious beasts scampered madly forwards, the carriage swaying to and fro, and the persons within it holding on to the sides as best they might, until seeing a great ravine before them, where an upset was inevitable, the two gentlemen leapt for their lives, each out of his side of the chaise.  Harry Esmond was quit for a fall on the grass, which was so severe that it stunned him for a minute; but he got up presently very sick, and bleeding at the nose, but with no other hurt.  The Lord Mohun was not so fortunate; he fell on his head against a stone, and lay on the ground, dead to all appearance.

This misadventure happened as the gentlemen were on their return homewards; and my Lord Castlewood, with his son and daughter, who were going out for a ride, met the ponies as they were galloping with the car behind, the broken traces entangling their heels, and my lord’s people turned and stopped them.  It was young Frank who spied out Lord Mohun’s scarlet coat as he lay on the ground, and the party made up to that unfortunate gentleman and Esmond, who was now standing over him.  His large periwig and feathered hat had fallen off, and he was bleeding profusely from a wound on the forehead, and looking, and being, indeed, a corpse.

“Great God! he’s dead!” says my lord.  “Ride, some one:  fetch a doctor—­stay.  I’ll go home and bring back Tusher; he knows surgery,” and my lord, with his son after him, galloped away.

They were scarce gone when Harry Esmond, who was indeed but just come to himself, bethought him of a similar accident which he had seen on a ride from Newmarket to Cambridge, and taking off a sleeve of my lord’s coat, Harry, with a penknife, opened a vein of his arm, and was greatly relieved, after a moment, to see the blood flow.  He was near half an hour before he came to himself, by which time Doctor Tusher and little Frank arrived, and found my lord not a corpse indeed, but as pale as one.