"He has nothing else to do," said Alice, carelessly. "Here he is. He
has picked out a capital horse for us, too."
Meanwhile, Mellish had been dragged from beneath the train and
seated on the knee of one of his companions. He was in a stupor, and
had a large lump on his brow. His eye was almost closed. The man
with the crushed nose now showed himself an expert surgeon. While
Cashel supported the patient on the knee of another man, and the
rest of the party kept off the crowd by mingled persuasion and
violence, he produced a lancet and summarily reduced the swelling by
lancing it. He then dressed the puncture neatly with appliances for
that purpose which he carried about him, and shouted in Mellish's
ear to rouse him. But the trainer only groaned, and let his head
drop inert on his breast. More shouting was resorted to, but in
vain. Cashel impatiently expressed an opinion that Mellish was
shamming, and declared that he would not stand there to be fooled
with all the evening.
"If he was my pal 'stead o' yours," said the man with the broken
nose, "I'd wake him up fast enough."
"I'll save you the trouble," said Cashel, coolly stooping and
seizing between his teeth the cartilage of the trainer's ear.
"That's the way to do it," said the other, approvingly, as Mellish
screamed and started to his feet. "Now, then. Up with you."
He took Mellish's right arm, Cashel took the left, and they brought
him away between them without paying the least heed to his tears,
his protestations that he was hurt, his plea that he was an old man,
or his bitter demand as to where Cashel would have been at that
moment without his care.
Lord Worthington had taken advantage of this accident to slip away
from his travelling companions and drive alone to his lodgings in
Jermyn Street. He was still greatly excited; and when his valet, an
old retainer with whom he was on familiar terms, brought him a
letter that had arrived during his absence, he asked him four times
whether any one had called, and four times interrupted him by scraps
of information about the splendid day he had had and the luck he was
in.
"I bet five hundred even that it would be over in a quarter of an
hour; and then I bet Byron two hundred and fifty to one that it
wouldn't. That's the way to doit; eh, Bedford? Catch Cashel letting
two hundred and fifty slip through his fingers! By George, though,
he's an artful card. At the end of fourteen minutes I thought my
five hundred was corpsed. The Dutchman was full of fight; and Cashel
suddenly turned weak and tried to back out of the rally. You should
have seen the gleam in the Dutchman's eye when he rushed in after
him. He made cock-sure of finishing him straight off."