All ran towards him but Calvert, who, throwing his pistol at his feet, stood calm and erect. For a few seconds they bent down over the wounded man, and then Barnard, hastening back to his friend, whispered, “Through the chest; it is all over.”
He nodded, and taking his arm, said, “Don’t lose a moment; the Frenchman says you have not an instant to spare.”
For a moment Calvert moved as if going towards the others, then, as if with a changed purpose, he turned sharply round and walked towards the high road.
As Calvert was just about to gain the road, Barnard ran after him, and cried out, “Stop, Calvert, hear what these men say; they are crying out unfair against us. They declare--”
“Are you an ass, Bob?” said the other, angrily. “Who minds the stupid speech of fellows whose friend is knocked over?”
“Yes, but I’ll hear this out,” cried Barnard.
“You’ll do so without _me_, then, and a cursed fool you are for your pains. Drive across to the Bavarian frontier, my man,” said he, giving the postilion a Napoleon, “and you shall have a couple more if you get there within two hours.”
With all the speed that whip and spur could summon, the beasts sped along the level road, and Calvert, though occasionally looking through the small pane in the back of the carriage to assure himself he was not pursued, smoked on unceasingly. He might have been a shade graver than his wont, and preoccupied too, for he took no notice of the objects on the road, nor replied to the speeches of the postilion, who, in his self-praise, seemed to call for some expression of approval.
“You are a precious fool, Master Barnard, and you have paid for your folly, or you had been here before this.”
Such were his uttered thoughts, but it cost him little regret as he spoke them.
The steam-boat that left Constance for Lindau was just getting under weigh as he reached the lake, and he immediately embarked in her, and on the same evening, gained Austrian territory at Bregenz, to pass the night For a day or two, the quietness of this lone and little-visited spot suited him, and it was near enough to the Swiss frontier, at the Rhine, to get news from Switzerland. On the third day, a paragraph in the Basle Zeitung told him everything. It was, as such things usually are, totally misrepresented, but there was enough revealed for him to guess what had occurred. It was headed “Terrible Event,” and ran thus: