"Oh, oh!" gasped Helen. "What shall we do? He is—Oh, Ruth! he isn't dead?"
"Of a strained leg?" demanded Jane Ann, in some disgust.
"But he looks so white," said Helen, plaintively.
"He's just knocked out. It's hurt him lots more than he let on," declared the girl from Silver Ranch, who had seen many a man suffer in silence until he lost the grip on himself—as this youth had.
In half an hour the car stopped before Dr. Davison's gate—the gate with the green lamps. Jerry Sheming had come to his senses long since and seemed more troubled by the fact that he had fainted than by the injury to his leg.
Ruth, by a few searching questions, had learned something of his story, too. He had not been a passenger on the train in which Jane Ann was riding when the wreck occurred. Indeed, he hadn't owned carfare between stations, as he expressed it.
"I was hoofin' it from Cheslow to Grading. I heard of a job up at Grading—and I needed that job," Jerry had observed, drily.
This was enough to tell Ruth Fielding what was needed. When Dr. Davison asked where the young fellow belonged, Ruth broke in with:
"He's going to the mill with me. You come after us, Doctor, if you think he ought to go to bed before his leg is treated."
"What do you reckon your folks will say, Miss?" groaned the injured youth. And even Helen and Tom looked surprised.