“Leave him alone a bit,” came the cool voice of Henry. “He’s winded, if no more.”

“You’d better see that no bones are broken,” said the anxious Vicar.

“It wor a blessing as he should a dropped on that heap of hay just there,” said the labourer. “If he’d happened to ha’ catched hisself on this nog o’ wood ‘e wouldna ha’ stood much chance.”

Geoffrey wondered when he would have courage to venture down. He had wild notions of pitching himself head foremost from the stack: if he could only extinguish himself, he would be safe. Quite frantically, he longed not to be. The idea of going through life thus coiled up within himself in morbid self-consciousness,