“do you see that ’ere gentleman in the buggy, with the clipt un?” enquired ned stocker, as he pointed with his whip at a chaise, some fifty yards in advance. “well, for all he’s driving there so easy like, and comfortable, he once had a gig-shaft, and that’s a fact, driv right through his body!”
“rather him than me,” drawled a passenger on the box, without removing his cigar from his mouth.
“it’s true for all that,” returned ned, with a nod of his head equal to an affidavit.
[pg 5]
“the shaft run in under one armpit, right up to the tug, and out again at t’other besides pinning him to the wall of the stable—and that’s a thing such as don’t happen every day.”
“lucky it don’t,” said the smoker, between two puffs of his cigar.
“it an’t likely to come often,” resumed ned, “let alone the getting over it afterwards, which is the wonderfullest part of it all. to see him bowling along there, he don’t look like a man pinned to a stable-wall with the rod through him, right up to the tug—do he?”
“can’t say he does,” said the smoker.
“for my part,” said ned, “or indeed any man’s part, most people in such a case would have said, it’s all up with me, and good reason why, as i said afore, with a shaft clean through your inside, right up to the tug—and two inches besides into the stable wall, by way of a benefit. but somehow he always stuck to it—not the wall, you know—but his own opinion, that he should get over it—he was as firm as flints about that—and sure enough the event came off exactly.”
“the better for him,” said the smoker.
“i don’t know the rights on it,” said ned, “for i warn’t there—but they do say when he was dextricated from the rod, there was a regular tunnel through him, and in course the greatest danger was of his ketching cold in the lungs from the thorough draught.”
“nothing more likely,” said the fumigator.
“howsomever,” continued ned,
[pg 6]
“he was cured by dr. maiden of stratford, who give him lots of physic to provoke his stomach, and make him eat hearty; and by taking his feeds well,—warm mashes at first, and then hard meat, in course of time he filled up. nobody hardly believed it, though, when they see him about on his legs again—myself for one—but he always said he would overcome it, and he was as good as his word. if that an’t game, i don’t know what is.”
“no more do i,” said the man with the havannah.
“i don’t know the philosophy on it,” resumed ned, “but it’s a remark of mine about recovering, if a man says he will, he will,—and if he says he won’t, he won’t—you may book that for certain. mayhap a good pluck helps the wounds in healing kindly,—but so it is, for i’ve observed it. you’ll see one man with hardly a scratch on his face, and says he, i’m done for—and he turns out quite correct—while another as is cut to ribbons will say—never mind,—i’m good for another round, and so he proves, particularly if he’s one of your small farmers. i’ll give you a reason why.”
“now then,” said the smoker.
“my reason is,” replied ned, “that they’re all as hard as nails—regular pebbles for game. they take more thrashing than their own corn, and that’s saying something. they’re all fortitude, and nothing else. talk about punishment! nothing comes amiss to ’em, from butt-ends of whips and brickbats down to bludgeons loaded with lead. you can’t hurt their feelings. they’re jist like badgers, the more you welt ’em the more they grin, and when it’s over, maybe a turn-up at a cattle fair, or a stop by footpads, they’ll go home to their missises all over blood and wounds as cool and comfortable as cowcumbers, with holes in their heads enough to scarify a whole hospital of army surgeons.”
“the very thing scott has characterised,” i ventured to observe, “in the person of honest dandie.”
“begging your pardon, sir,” said ned,
[pg 7]
“i know farmer scott very well, and he’s anything but a dandy. i was just a going to bring forward, as one of the trumps, a regular out-and-outer. we become friends through an axident. it was a darkish night, you see, and him a little lushy or so, making a bit of a swerve in his going towards the middle of the road, before you could cry snacks! i was over him with the old regulator.”
“good god!” exclaimed my left-hand companion on the roof. “was not the poor fellow hurt?”
“why, not much for him,” answered ned, with a very decided emphasis on the pronoun. “though it would have been a quietus for nine men out of ten, and, as the jews say, take your pick of the basket. but he looked queer at first, and shook himself, and made a wryish face, like a man that hadn’t got the exact bit of the joint he preferred.”
“looked queer!” ejaculated the compassionate passenger, “he must have looked dreadful! i remember the regulator, one of the oldest and heaviest vehicles on the road. but of course you picked him up, and got him inside, and——”
“quite the reverse,” answered ned, quietly, “and far from it; he picked himself up, quite independent, and wouldn’t even accept a lift on the box. he only felt about his head a bit, and then his back, and his arms, and his thighs, and his lines, and after that he guv a nod, and says he, ‘all right,’ and away he toddled.”
“i can’t credit it,” exclaimed the man on the roof.
“that’s jist what his wife said,” replied ned, with considerable composure, in spite of the slur on his veracity. “let alone two black eyes, and his collar bone, and the broke rib, he’d a hole in his head, with a flint sticking in it bigger than any one you can find since macadaming. but he made so light on it all, and not being very clear besides in his notions, i’m blest if he didn’t tell her he’d only been knockt down by a man with a truck!”
“not a bad story,” said the smoker on the box.
i confess i made internally a parallel remark. naturally robust as my faith is, i could not, as hamlet says, let “belief lay hold of me,” with the coachman’s narrative in his hand, like a copy of a writ. i am no stranger, indeed, to the peculiar
[pg 8]
hardihood of our native yeomanry; but ned, in his zeal for their credit, had certainly overdrawn the truth. as to his doctrine of presentiments, it had never been one of the subjects of my speculations; but on a superficial view, it appeared to me improbable that life or death, in cases of casualty, could be predetermined with such certainty as he had averred; and particularly as i happen to know a certain lady, who has been accepting the bills of mortality at two months’ date, for many years past—but has never honoured them when due. it was fated, however, that honest ned was to be confirmed in his theories and corroborated in his facts.
we had scarcely trotted half a mile in meditative silence, when we overtook a sturdy pedestrian, who was pacing the breadth as well as the length of the road, rather more like a land surveyor than a mere traveller. he evidently belonged to the agricultural class, which ned had distinguished by the title of small farmers. like scott’s liddesdale yeoman, he wore a shaggy dreadnought, below which you saw two well-fatted calves, penned in a pair of huge top-boots—the tops and the boots being of such different shades of brown as you may observe in two arable fields of various soil, a rich loam and a clay. in his hand he carried a formidable knotted club-stick, and a member of the heralds’ college would have set him down at once a tenant of the earl of leicester, he looked so like a bear with a ragged staff.
i observed that ned seemed anxious. one of his leaders was a bolter, and his wheelers were far from steady; and the man ahead walked not quite so straightly as if he had been ploughing a furrow. we were almost upon him—ned gave a sharp halloo—the man looked back, and wavered. a minute decided the matter. he escaped scylla, but charybdis yawned for him—in plain prose, he cleared the rocket, but contrived to get under the broad wheel of a warwickshire waggon, which was passing
[pg 9]
in the opposite direction. there was still a chance,—even a fly-waggon may be stopped without much notice—but the waggoner was inside, sweethearting with three maids that were going to coventry. every voice cried out woh! but the right one. the horses plodded on—the wheels rumbled—the bells jingled—we all thought a knell.
ned instantly pulled up, with his team upon their haunches—we all alighted, and in a moment the sixteen the rocket was licensed to carry were at the fatal spot. in the midst of the circle lay, what we considered a bundle of last linen just come home from the mangle.
“that’s a dead un,” said the smoker, throwing away as he spoke the butt-end of a cigar.
“poor wretch,” exclaimed the humane man from the roof, “what a shocking spectacle!”
“it’s over his chest,” said i.
“it’s all over,” said the passenger on my right.
“and a happy release,” said a lady on my left; “he must have been a cripple for life.”
“he can’t have a whole rib in his body,” said a man from the dicky.
“hall to hattums,” said a gentleman from the inside.
“the worst i ever see, and i’ve had the good luck to see many,” said the guard.
“no, he can’t get over that,” said ned himself.
to our astonishment, however, the human mass still breathed. after a long sigh it opened one eye—the right—then the other—the mouth gasped—the tongue moved—and at last even spoke, though in disjointed syllables.
“we’re nigh—hand—an’t we—the nine—milestun?”
“yes—yes—close to it,” answered a dozen voices, and one in its bewilderment asked, “do you live there?” but was set right by the sufferer himself.
[pg 10]
“no—a mile fudder.”
“where is there a surgeon?” asked the humane man, “i will ride off for him on one of the leaders.”
“better not,” said the phlegmatic smoker, who had lighted a fresh cigar with some german tinder and a lucifer—“not used to saddle—may want a surgeon yourself.”
“is there never a doctor among the company?” inquired the guard.
“i am a medical man,” replied a squat vulgar-looking personage. “i sell morison’s pills—but i haven’t any about me.”
“glad of it,” said the smoker, casting a long puff in the other’s face.
“this is the time when church-yards yawn.”
“poor wretch!” sighed the compassionate man. “he is beyond human aid. heaven help the widow and the fatherless—he looks like a family man!”
“i were not to blaame,” said the waggoner.
[pg 11]
“the woife and childerin can’t coom upon i.”
“does anyone know who he is?” inquired the coachman, but there was no answer.
“maybe the gemman has a card or summut,” said the gentleman from the inside.
“is there no house near?” inquired the lady.
“for to get a shutter off on,” added the gentleman.
“ought we not to procure a postchaise,” inquired a gentleman’s footman.
“or a shell, in case,” suggested the man from the dicky.
“shell be hanged!” said the sufferer, in a tone that made us all jump a yard backward. “stick me up agin the milestun—there, easy does it—that’s comfortable—and now tell me, and no nonsense,—be i flat?”
“a little pancakey,” said the man with the cigar.
“i say,” repeated the sufferer, with some earnestness, “be i flat—quite flat—as flat like as a sheet of paper? yes or no?”
“no, no, no,” burst from sixteen voices at once, and the assurance seemed to take as great a load off his mind as had lately passed over his body. by an effort he contrived to get up and sit upon the milestone, from which he waved us a good-bye, accompanied by the following words:—
“gentlefolk, my best thanks and my sarvice to you, and a pleasant journey. don’t consarn yourselves about me, for there’s nothing dangerous. i shall do well, i know i shall; and i’ll tell you what i’ll go upon—if i bean’t flat i shall get round.”
