Keep still."
For a moment they all obeyed him. He began to crawl
through the mud, touching first this, then that, grasping
the cushions by mistake, listening for the faintest whisper
that might guide him. He tried to light a match, holding
the box in his teeth and striking at it with the uninjured
hand. At last he succeeded, and the light fell upon the
bundle which he was seeking.
It had rolled off the road into the wood a little way,
and had fallen across a great rut. So tiny it was that had
it fallen lengthways it would have disappeared, and he might
never have found it.
"I stole it! I and the idiot--no one was there." She
burst out laughing.
He sat down and laid it on his knee. Then he tried to
cleanse the face from the mud and the rain and the tears.
His arm, he supposed, was broken, but he could still move it
a little, and for the moment he forgot all pain. He was
listening--not for a cry, but for the tick of a heart or the
slightest tremor of breath.
"Where are you?" called a voice. It was Miss Abbott,
against whose carriage they had collided. She had relit one
of the lamps, and was picking her way towards him.
"Silence!" he called again, and again they obeyed. He
shook the bundle; he breathed into it; he opened his coat
and pressed it against him. Then he listened, and heard
nothing but the rain and the panting horses, and Harriet,
who was somewhere chuckling to herself in the dark.
Miss Abbott approached, and took it gently from him.
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