“I’m quite sensible,” he kept repeating, lest she should relapse into screams.

“Lord love you for your spirit!” exclaimed the widow, and there they remained, he like a winged eagle, striving to raise himself from time to time, and fighting with his desperate weakness.  His face was to the ground; after a while he was still.  In alarm the widow stooped over him:  she feared that he had given up his last breath; but the candle-light showed him shaken by a sob, as it seemed to her, though she could scarce believe it of this manly fellow.  Yet it proved true; she saw the very tears.  He was crying at his helplessness.

“Oh, my darling boy!” she burst out; “what have they done to ye? the cowards they are! but do now have pity on a woman, and let me get some creature to lift you to a bed, dear.  And don’t flap at me with your hand like a bird that’s shot.  You’re quite, quite sensible, I know; quite sensible, dear; but for my sake, Robert, my Harry’s good friend, only for my sake, let yourself be a carried to a clean, nice bed, till I get Dr. Bean to you.  Do, do.”

Her entreaties brought on a succession of the efforts to rise, and at last, getting round on his back, and being assisted by the widow, he sat up against the wall.  The change of posture stupified him with a dizziness.  He tried to utter the old phrase, that he was sensible, but his hand beat at his forehead before the words could be shaped.

“What pride is when it’s a man!” the widow thought, as he recommenced the grievous struggle to rise on his feet; now feeling them up to the knee with a questioning hand, and pausing as if in a reflective wonder, and then planting them for a spring that failed wretchedly; groaning and leaning backward, lost in a fit of despair, and again beginning, patient as an insect imprisoned in a circle.

The widow bore with his man’s pride, until her nerves became afflicted by the character of his movements, which, as her sensations conceived them, were like those of a dry door jarring loose.  She caught him in her arms:  “It’s let my back break, but you shan’t fret to death there, under my eyes, proud or humble, poor dear,” she said, and with a great pull she got him upright.  He fell across her shoulder with so stiff a groan that for a moment she thought she had done him mortal injury.

“Good old mother,” he said boyishly, to reassure her.

“Yes; and you’ll behave to me like a son,” she coaxed him.

They talked as by slow degrees the stairs were ascended.

“A crack o’ the head, mother—­a crack o’ the head,” said he.

“Was it the horse, my dear?”

“A crack o’ the head, mother.”

“What have they done to my boy Robert?”

“They’ve,”—­he swung about humorously, weak as he was and throbbing with pain—­“they’ve let out some of your brandy, mother...got into my head.”

“Who’ve done it, my dear?”