Ruth waited beside the old doctor, not without some apprehension. How would this Tom Cameron look? What kind of a boy was he? According to Jasper Parloe he was a very bad boy, indeed. She had heard that he was the son of a rich man. While the men were bringing the senseless body up the steep bank her mind ran riot with the possibilities that lay in store for her because of this accident to the dry-goods merchant's son.
And now the bearers were at the top of the bank, and she could see the limp form borne by them—a man holding the body under the arms and another by his feet. But, altogether, it looked really as though they carried a limp sack between them.
"Fust time I ever see that boy still," murmured Jasper Parloe.
"Cracky! He's pale; ain't he?" said another man.
Doctor Davison dropped on one knee beside the body as they laid it down. The lanterns were drawn together that their combined light might illuminate the spot. Ruth saw that the figure was that of a youth not much older than herself—lean, long limbed, well dressed, and with a face that, had it not been so pale, she would have thought very nice looking indeed.
"Poor lad!" Ruth heard the physician murmur. "He has had a hard fall—and that's a nasty knock on his head."
The wound was upon the side of his head above the left ear and was now all clotted with blood. It was from this wound, in some moment of consciousness, that he had traced the word "Help" on his torn handkerchief, and fastened the latter, with the lamp of his motorcycle, to the dog's collar.
Here was the machine, bent and twisted enough, brought up the bank by two of the men.
"Dunno what you can do for the boy, Doctor," said one of them; "but it looks to me as though this contraption warn't scurcely wuth savin'."
"Oh, we'll bring the boy around all right," said Doctor Davison, who had felt Tom Cameron's pulse and now rose quickly. "Lift him carefully upon the stretcher. We will get him into bed before I do a thing to him. He's best as he is while we are moving him."