Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/56

42 and from one arm, held stiffly forward, protruded the stub of a tree-branch, standing out like a bone from a red rent in the wrist.

“Oh!” shuddered the two girls. Fascinated by this terrible figure, they stared, motionless.

The boy came reeling forward. He did not see them; he did not know where he was going. His eyes were strained at the crude thing that, like some savage weapon, protruded from his arm. With his other hand he pulled at it, and Harriet shuddered as she saw it resist him. Again he pulled, and, with a great effort, he yanked it from the wound. It was followed by a gush of blood. The boy gazed for a moment at the inches of crimsoned wood, then cast the stick from him. Three more strides he took toward the girls, until they prepared to avoid him. Then, without a word or a groan, he plunged heavily, and fell almost at their feet.

Two of them screamed and turned to run. “Stop!” commanded Harriet. They waited, poised for flight, while Harriet looked at the boy.

He was motionless, insensible. The wound in the temple was concealed as he lay, but she saw that from the injured wrist, lying in the grass, were coming regular jets of blood. Immediately she dropped on her knees before him.

“Your handkerchiefs, girls!” she cried. But she knew that in this emergency handkerchiefs were too short and weak. Quickly unbuttoning the sleeve of the lad’s outing shirt, with one strong pull she tore it open to the shoulder, and with two more ripped it from the arm. The blood still spurted from the wrist, and behind her the girls squealed again. Then rapidly Harriet knotted the sleeve round the arm above the wound, and gave one end of it to the stronger of her friends. “Pull!” she directed. At her own first pull, she drew the other almost from her balance. “Pull!” she commanded impatiently. To her relief, at the second pull she saw the blood slacken its flow. At the third, it stopped entirely. Then she threw the ends again around the arm, knotted them securely, and looked up at her friends.

“I can run fastest,” she said. “Will you two stay here while I go and get Nate?”

They looked at each other, hesitating. Like silly creatures they blushed, and like foolish ones they shuddered. *“No,” they agreed. “We don't dare!”

“Then go for Nate quickly!” she ordered. “Both go. Together you ought to find the way.”

“Come with us,” begged one.

Harriet shook her head. “He must n’t be left alone. If he moves, the knot may slip, and he ’d bleed to death. No, go quickly, and try to notice how to find your way back.”

With visible relief, yet fluttered by excitement and importance, they left her. Harriet was alone in the pasture with the boy.

Now, first, she began to feel the strain of the event. It was scarcely a minute since she heard that startling cry in the bushes, and her nerves yet thrilled in response. The excitement of the sudden need was still on her. Her heart was beating fast; her knees were so weak that with relief she sat down on a stone to rest. Presently she found herself studying the boy.

He was so pale that her heart was sore for him. She wished for water, to revive him; but there was none on that hillside, and so she waited, and thought. She had never seen the lad before: what kind of a boy was he? The features were clear-cut and, in fact, refined; the clothes, though torn, seemed rather to have suffered from the fall than from wear. They were fairly new and of good quality.

Suddenly she remembered the wound in the temple, and, rising, went to the boy and turned his head. The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was rapidly swelling and darkening from a cruel bruise. She put her fingers to it, and, with a groan, the boy opened his eyes.

At sight of her he started and tried to rise. He was on his knees, his face red with the effort, when once more he turned white, groaned, and collapsed again. This time he fell on his back. Anxiously Harriet examined the bandage: it had not slipped. When she looked at the boy’'s face again, he was watching her.

“It is not bleeding,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Everything swims,” he answered faintly. His eyes closed, and so long remained so that she feared he had fainted again. But after a while he looked at her.

“Are you in pain?”’ she asked.

He shook his head, not in answer, but as if waving the question aside. With some difficulty he spoke. “Back there where I fell—my coat.”

“Do you want it?” she asked.

His eyes closed wearily, but he nodded.

She hastened into the little wood, and there found, at the foot of the cliff, the place of his fall, marked by two large fallen stones, and by a young tree quite broken down. There lay his jacket, and she carried it back to him. Though he did not open his eyes, she felt that he knew she had returned.

“I have it,” she said. Slowly he spoke again. “In the pocket—a wallet.”

She took it out and held it in her hand. “Yes, it ’s here.”