Mystery of the Inn by the Shore by Florence Warden

Clifford was so entirely taken by surprise that he hardly realized, in the first moment, that he was hurt. The next, he dashed open the door at one blow, and finding Jem outside coolly wiping his knife on the ivy which grew on this side of the house, he seized the fisherman by the throat with one hand, snatched his knife from him and flung it away with the other, and then hurled the man from him with such violence that the latter fell, and, striking his head upon the stone-ledge of a window, lay motionless on the ground.

Then, suddenly overcome by a feeling of dizziness, the first result of his wound, Clifford staggered back against the broken door, and into Nell's arms.

"Oh, it is my fault -- my fault! I ought not to have asked you to come! " moaned she, not attempting now to hide her affectionate concern from the people who, startled by the noise of the affray, now pressed into the room.

George Claris was among the first to enter, and he frowned angrily on seeing Clifford, of whose arrival he had not yet heard.

"So it's you, is it, Mr. King! " he exclaimed surlily, on recognizing the man whom he looked upon as the origin of all his trouble. "And what have you been up to now, eh?"

"Oh, uncle, uncle, can't you see that he's hurt, badly hurt? " implored Nell. "Send for a doctor -- oh, some one pray go for a doctor, or he will bleed to death!"

But George Claris hardly concealed the fact that that event would give him satisfaction rather than annoyance; he did not dare to interfere, however, when Nell gave orders to one of the men who had crowded in, to go to Stroan for a doctor.

"Who did it? " somebody, not the landlord, presently asked.

Clifford was by this time hardly conscious. He had been laid upon the sofa, while Nell herself, keeping enough presence of mind to be of use and to see what the danger was, held her own fingers to the wound to check the flow of blood.

She heard the question and answered it.

"It was Jem Stickels. He struck him through the glass."

This reply led to further investigations, and Jem was quickly discovered and brought into the room where his victim lay. Unconscious though he was, having been stunned severely, Jem, of course, got no pity from Nell. And when some of the men suggested carrying him to the cottage where he lodged, which was within a stone's throw of the inn, Nell made no suggestion that he should remain where he was, being unaffectedly glad to have him taken out of her sight.

Buxom Meg exchanged many a nod and wink and grin with the customers from the bar, inspired by the utter absorption Nell showed in her lover and his danger.

"All my fault -- my fault! " the girl kept murmuring, as she hung over Clifford, watching his face, which had grown pale, with straining eyes, and listening anxiously to the breathing, which told her that he was alive.

Then Meg became abruptly conscious that there was something in this simple grief, this maidenly affection, too sacred for the gaze of the rough, though sympathetic, group. And she bundled them all, with large, wide-sweeping gestures as of a gigantic hen, back into the bar. And Nell and her lover and her uncle were left together.

George Claris, though he, too, was somewhat touched, was uneasy and suspicious.

"What was he doing down here? " he began, inquisitorially, when they were left alone. "And what was he up to that made Jem Stickels knife him? No good, I'll be bound," grumbled he.

Nell, without raising her eyes from her lover's face, answered, mechanically, with white lips:

"He loves me, uncle. He has asked me, weeks ago, to be his wife, but I hadn't even promised; no, not a word; but when he came to-day -- "

"Ah, what made him come to-day?"