“Damn him pattridge” muttered Sambo, who lingered a moment or two in the rear to harness himself with the apparatus of which his master had disencumbered his person.  “Damn him pattridge” and he kicked the lifeless bird indignantly with his foot “you all e cause e dis; what e hell e do here?”

This tirade however against the partridge did not by any means prevent the utterer from eventually consigning it to its proper destination in the game bag as the noblest specimen of the day’s sport, and thus burthened he issued from the wood, nearly at the same moment with the wounded Gerald and his friends.

The consternation of all parties on witnessing the disaster of the sailor, whose arm had already been swollen to a fearful size, while the wound itself began to assume an appearance of mortification, was strongly contrasted with the calm silence of Miss Montgomerie, who was busily employed in stirring certain herbs which she was boiling over the fire that had been kindled in the distance for the preparation of the dinner.  The sleeve of the sufferer’s shooting jacket had been ripped to the shoulder by his brother and as he now sat on a pile of cloaks within the marquee, the rapid discoloration of the white skin, could be distinctly traced, marking as it did the progress of the deadly poison towards the vital portion of the system.  In this trying emergency all eyes were turned with anxiety on the slightest movement of her who had undertaken the cure, and none more eagerly than those of Henry Grantham and Gertrude D’Egville, the latter of whom, gentle even as she was, could not but acknowledge pang of regret that to another, and that other a favored rival—­should be the task of alleviating the anguish and preserving the life of the only man she had ever loved.

At length Miss Montgomerie came forward; and never was beneficent angel more hailed than did Henry Grantham hail her, whom scarcely an hour since he had looked upon with aversion, when with a countenance of unwonted paleness but confident of success, she advanced towards the opening of the marquee, to which interest in the sufferer had drawn even the domestics.  All made way for her approach.  Kneeling at the side of Gerald, and depositing the vessel in which she had mixed her preparation, she took the wounded arm in her own fair hands with the view, it was supposed, of holding it while another applied the remedy.  Scarcely however had she secured it in a firm grasp when, to the surprise and consternation of all around, she applied her own lips to the wound and continued them then; in despite of the efforts of Gerald to withdraw his arm, nor was it until there was already a visible reduction in the size, and change in the color of the limb that she removed them.  This done she arose and retired to the skirt of the wood whence she again returned in less than a minute.  Even in the short time that had elapsed, the arm of the sufferer had experienced an almost miraculous