Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/132

 backed into the room. It ’s a murdered man!” she cried, there. “He ’s dyin’! He ’s dyin’ on the doorstep!”

A younger woman put her aside swiftly and came out with a lamp. The grimace that Barney made was an attempt to smile at her. He raised himself slowly on his hands, and his head nodded and swayed. He saw her at a great distance, very small, in a little circle of light that gradually closed in upon her till she and the light vanished.

When she put her lamp down on the porch table and turned to help him, she found that he had fainted.

He regained consciousness lying on his back, looking up at the dark beams and lemon-yellow plaster of a living-room ceiling. The head of a young woman came between him and the beams, and her eyes were very large and brown. He saw them disassociated from all else, moving with an independent intelligence of their own, between long lashes, under dark eyebrows. A warm, wet cloth