EUGENE ARAM

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton



BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

IN WHICH WE RETURN TO WALTER.--HIS DEBT OF GRATITUDE TO
MR. PERTINAX FILLGRAVE.--THE CORPORAL'S ADVICE,
AND THE CORPORAL'S VICTORY.

Let a Physician be ever so excellent,
there will be those that censure him.
--Gil Blas.

We left Walter in a situation of that critical nature, that it would be
inhuman to delay our return to him any longer. The blow by which he had
been felled, stunned him for an instant; but his frame was of no common
strength and hardihood, and the imminent peril in which he was placed,
served to recall him from the momentary insensibility. On recovering
himself, he felt that the ruffians were dragging him towards the hedge,
and the thought flashed upon him that their object was murder. Nerved by
this idea, he collected his strength, and suddenly wresting himself from
the grasp of one of the ruffians who had seized him by the collar, he had
already gained his knee, and now his feet, when a second blow once more
deprived him of sense.