Nothing could look less dangerous; the poor creature sank down on the floor and moaned, licked its hind leg, and then dragged itself as if famished to the milk, lapped a little eagerly, but lay down again whining, as if in pain.  Ulick and Albinia called to it, and it looked up and tried to wag its tail, whining appealingly.  ’My poor brute!’ he cried, ’they’ve treated you worse than a heathen.  That’s all—­let me see what I can do for you.’

‘Yes, but yourself, Ulick,’ said Albinia, as in his haste he took down his handkerchief from his mouth; ’I do believe your lip is cut through!  You had better attend to that first.’

‘No, no, thank you,’ said Ulick, eagerly, ’they’ve broken the poor wretch’s leg!’ and he was the next moment sitting on the summer-house floor, lifting up the animal tenderly, regardless of her expostulation that the injured, frightened creature might not know its friends.  But she did it injustice; it wagged its stumpy tail, and licked his fingers.

She offered to fetch rag for his surgery, and he farther begged for some slight bits of wood to serve as splints, he and his brothers had been dog-doctors before.  As she hurried into the house, Sophy, who had sunk on a sofa in the drawing-room, looking deadly pale, called out, ‘Is he bitten?’

‘No, no,’ cried Albinia, hurrying on, ’the dog is all safe.  It has only got a broken leg.’

Maurice, with whom Lucy had all this time been fighting, came out with her to see the rest of the adventure; and thought it very cruel that he was not permitted to touch the patient, which bore the operation with affecting fortitude and gratitude, and was then consigned to a basket lined with hay, and left in the summer-house, Mr. Kendal being known to have an almost eastern repugnance to dogs.

Then Ulick had leisure to be conducted to the morning-room, and be rendered a less ghastly spectacle, by some very uncomfortable sticking-plaster moustaches, which hardly permitted him to narrate his battle distinctly.  He thought the boys, even of Tibb’s Alley, would hardly have ventured any violence after he had interfered, but for some young men who aught to have known better; he fancied he had seen young Tritton of Robbles Leigh, and he was sure of an insolent groom whom Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, to the great vexation of his uncle, had recently sent down with a horse to the King’s Head.  They had stimulated the boys to a shout of Paddy and a shower of stones, and Ulick expected credit for great discretion, in having fled instead of fought.  ’Ah! if Brian and Connel had but been there, wouldn’t we have put them to the rout?’

Nothing would then serve him but going back to Tibb’s Alley to trace the dog’s history, and meantime Lucy, from the end of the passage, beckoned to Albinia, and whispered mysteriously that ’Sophy would not have any one know it for the world—­but,’ said Lucy, ’I found her absolutely fainting away on the sofa, only she would not let me call you, and ordered that no one should know anything about it.  But, mamma, there was a red-hot knitting-needle sticking out of the fire, and I am quite sure that she meant if Ulick was bitten, to burn out the place.’