The Heart

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 to show my hurt, though I knew well that

my mother, being a woman and soft toward all wounds, would make much

of it, and maybe of me on its account. But I was not of a mind to

purchase affection by complaints of bodily ills, so I lay down under

the hedge in the soft grass, keeping my bruised shoulder uppermost,

and remained there thinking of the little maid, till finally the

pain easing somewhat, I fell asleep, and was presently awakened by a

soft touch on my sore shoulder, which caused me to wince and start

up with wide eyes, and there was Catherine Cavendish.