“What means that hurt on your shoulder, Harry?” asked my stepfather, Col.  John Chelmsford, and his voice was kind enough then.  “I would not have laid such a heavy hand on thy shoulder had I known of it,” he added.  My stepfather had never aught against me that I wot of, having simply naught for me, and a man cannot in justice be held to account for the limitations of his affections, especially toward a rival’s son.  He spoke with all kindness, and his great ruddy face had a heavy gleam of pity for my hurt, but I answered not one word.  “How came it so, Harry?” he asked again with growing wonder at my silence, but I would not reply.

Then Captain Cavendish also addressed me.  “You need have no fear, however you came by the hurt, my lad,” he said, and I verily believe he thought I had somehow caught the hurt while poaching on his preserves.  I stood before them quite still, with my knees stiff enough now, and I think the colour came back in my face by reason of the resistance of my spirit.

“Harry, how got you that wound on your shoulder?  Answer me, sir,” said Colonel Chelmsford, his voice gathering wrath anew.  But I remained silent.  I do not, to this day, know why, except that to tell of any service rendered has always seemed to me to attaint the honour of the teller, and how much more when it was a service toward that little maid!  So I kept my silence.

Then my stepfather’s face blazed high, and his mouth straightened and widened, and his grasp tightened on a riding-whip which he carried, for he had left his horse grazing a few yards away.  “How came you by it, sir?” he demanded, and his voice was thick.  Then, when I would not reply, he raised the whip, and swung it over my shoulders, but I caught it with my sound arm ere it fell, and at the same time the little maid, Mary Cavendish, set up a piteous wail of fear in her nurse’s arms.

“I pray you, sir, do not frighten her,” I said, “but wait till she be gone.”  And then I waved the black woman to carry her away, and with my lame arm.  When she had fled with the child’s soft wail floating back, I turned to my stepfather, Col.  John Chelmsford, and he, holding fiercely to the whip which I relinquished, still eyed me with doubt.

“Harry, why will you not tell?” he said, but I shook my head, waiting for him to strike, for I was but a boy, and it had been so before, and perhaps more justly.

“Let the lad go, Chelmsford,” cried Captain Cavendish.  “I’ll warrant he has done no harm.”  But my stepfather would not heed him.

“Answer me, Harry,” said he.  Then, when I would not, down came the riding-whip, but only thrice, and not hard.  “Now go you home,” said my stepfather, “and show your mother the hurt, however you came by it, and have her put some of the cooling lotion on a linen cloth to it.”  Then he and Captain Cavendish went their ways, and I went toward home, creeping through the gap in the May hedge.  But I did not go far, having no mind