'Help me away from this horrible place,' entreated the lady: 'I have fallen among savages in a dreadful wilderness. Am I in England, in Europe--or is this the wilds of Northern Canada?'
'She is lame,' said the young man to Joyce. 'Assist me in conveying her to the house yonder.'
Joyce put herself submissively on one side.
'How is my father?' asked the young lady.
'This strange girl tells me he has broken his neck.'
He was silent. He could not tell her the truth. It must be broken gently to her.
'Let us hope for the best. I have sent the post-boy to Okehampton for a doctor. He will know better than I what is the matter, and what must be done.'
'But you can surely tell me whether he be alive or dead.'
'I know he be dead,' said Joyce roughly. 'What's a broke is a broke, and his neck be broke as sure as a bit o' cloam. I told her so.'
'Is he dead?' again asked the young lady.
She was now being carried to the house. There was no tremor in the arms that rested on the shoulders of her bearers.
'I asked you a simple question. It is unmannerly to refuse an answer.'
'I believe he is dead,' said he with an effort.
The young man stopped; the girl Joyce stopped also. The twilight from the north-west was full on the white lovely face; there was no expression of distress on it, none of grief--not a trace of a tear in her large dark eyes.
'Why do you not go on? I said I am very sorry, naturally. He was my father. What else should I say?'
The young man and Joyce conveyed the lady between them under a low embattled gateway into a small yard or garden--it was too dark to distinguish which--and halted in the porch of a house.
Joyce said: 'Stay, I go no vurder. I niver ha' been inside a house and under hellens (slates) afore, and I bain't a going now.'
The door opened, and a blaze of ruddy light fell on them. A young lady had opened to admit them.
'There be Miss Cicely Battishill,' said Joyce. 'Sure her will take my place once for all.'
'Another step more, girl,' said the young man to Joyce, 'and our burden is in a chair.'
'Why do'y call me a gurl?' asked Joyce. 'I bain't a gurl, I be a maiden. There be maidens in these parts and no gurls. I dunnow, but the leddy I been a helping may be a girl; hers different from I, I be a maiden.'