My brother John's man, however, whom he had brought from England,
and whom I had known as a boy, and sometimes stolen away to hunt
with, he being one of the village-lads, shaved me as if it had been
for my execution, and often I, somewhat dazed by the loss of blood,
looking at him, saw the great tears trickling down his cheeks. A
soft-hearted man he was, who had met with sore troubles, having lost
his family, a wife and three little ones, after which he returned to
England and entered my brother's service, though he had been brought
up independently, being the son of an inn-keeper.
Something there was about this gentle, downcast man, adding the
weight of my sorrow to his own, which would have aroused me to
courage, if, as I said before, I had not been in such a state of
body, that for the time my consciousness of what was to come was
clouded.
There I sat on my bench, leaning stiffly back against the prison
wall, a strange buzzing in my ears, and I scarcely knew nor sensed
it when Parson Downs entered hurriedly, and leant over me,
whispering that if I would, and could, my chance to escape was
outside.
"The fleetest horse in the Colony," said he, "and, Harry, I have
seen Dick Barry, and if thou canst but ride to the turn of the road,
thou wilt be met by Black Betty and guided to a safe place; and the
jailer hath drank over much Burgundy to which I treated him,
and--and if thou canst, Harry--"
Then he stopped and looked at me and turned angrily to the physician
who was packing up his lancets and vials to depart. "My God, sir,"
he cried, "do you kill or cure? You have not bled him again? Lord,
Lord, had I but a lancet and a purge for the spirit as you for the
flesh, there would be not only no sin but no souls left in the
Colony! You have not bled him again, sir?"
But Martyn Jennings paid no more heed to him than if he had been a
part of the prison wall, and, indeed, I doubt if he ever heeded any
one who had not need of either his nostrums or his lancet, and after
a last look at my bandages he went away.
Then Parson Downs and my brother's man looked at each other.
"It is of no use, sir," said the man, whose name was Will Wickett.
"Poor Master Wingfield cannot ride a horse; he is far too weak." And
with that verily the tears rolled down his cheeks, so womanish had
he grown by reason of the sore trials to which he had been put.