“The gentleman asked me to explain—­” I began, remembering what had preceded my fall.

“Never mind about that now,” said the lady.  “You will go to bed, and when you have had some food you will sleep, and you can tell my husband all about it in the morning.”

And then she directed the two stablemen who were standing at the door to help me up the ladder into the loft of the coach house.  A bed, spread with linen as good as ever I lay on, was arranged at one end; and, dropping on to this, I was asleep immediately.  They told me next morning that the mistress had herself brought up the posset which her servant had prepared; but, finding me in such deep slumber, had carried it away again, saying that sleep was as good as food to me then.

The sunlight, streaming in at the little window above my bed, wakened me early.  I was at first perplexed at my unfamiliar surroundings, but, recollecting at length the happenings of the previous day, I got up and descended the stairs.  At the door of the coach house one of the men I had already seen was swilling the wheel of a big coach with pails of water, whistling the while.  He grinned when he saw me, and said: 

“Mistress said you was to go straight to kitchen when you waked, and fill your stomick.”

“I am mighty hungry, to be sure, but I should like to wash first,” I replied.

“Why, you do look ’mazing grimy,” he said with another grin.  “Do ye feel better this marnin’?  You went into a faint like as I never did see—­a real female faint it was.  I reckon as how you be overgrowed, young man.”

“Where shall I find the pump?” I asked, restive under this reference to my unhappy attire.

“Ho, Giles!” he called, “take the young man to the poomp.”

At this cry, Giles, in whom I recognized the second man whose skull I had threatened to crack, appeared from round the corner of the coach house.  His face also wore a grin.

“Ay, true now, you do want the poomp,” he said.  “Come, and I’ll show ’ee.  It do make a young feller weak-like when he overgrows his strength.  There was my sister Jane’s Billy, to be sure, shot up like a weed, he did, was for ever falling into fits, and a bit soft in his noddle, too, poor soul.

“Here’s the poomp; be ’ee strong enough to draw for yourself, think ’ee, or shall I do it for ’ee?”

I was strongly tempted to catch the fellow by the middle and give him a back throw which would enlighten him as to my physical aptitude; but I forbore, and allowed him to pump for me, which he did with great willingness, discoursing the while on the infirmities of all his kin.  Refreshed by my ablutions, I was nothing loath to follow him to the kitchen, where a red-faced little dumpling of a cook set before me such a breakfast as would have made Mistress Pennyquick stare.

“Eat away,” she said, setting her arms akimbo and eying me up and down as I ravenously began my meal.  “Lawks!  I don’t wonder ye fainted if ’tis true, as they say, that ye hadn’t had bite or sup for a week.  You’ve a big body to keep a-goin’, to be sure; overgrowed your strength seemingly.  The likes of me don’t faint.”