“Will he die, Uncle Jep?” whispered Judith, crouching beside him, her dark eyes roving desperately from the still form to her uncle’s countenance. “What must we do for him?”
“N-no—I reckon he has a chance,” hesitated Jephthah. Then, glancing at her white, miserable face, “an’ ef he has, hit’s to git him away from here an’ into bed right. Lord, I wish ’t the boys had been home to he’p us out. Well, we’ll have to do the best we can.”
As he spoke he put the word into action, getting a length of home-made carpet to put in the bottom of the waggon before he should lay in the feather-bed upon which Creed was to rest. As he worked, despite the look of acute anxiety, the old man’s eye was brighter, his step was freer, his head was borne more erect, than Judith had seen it since the trouble came.
Silent, efficient, careful, experienced, he managed with her help to lift the unconscious man into the waggon and place him, his head in Judith’s lap, for the journey home.
“You mind now, Judy,” he admonished, almost sternly, “ef he comes to hisse’f you speak to him mighty quiet and pleasant-like. Don’t you set to cryin’—don’t you make no fuss. ’Tain’t every gal I’d trust thisaway. Nothin’ worse for a sick man than to get him excited.” He took the lines and drove with infinite care and caution, walking beside the horse.
But his warning was unnecessary; Creed never roused from the lethargy in which his senses were locked. They got him safely home, the old man undressed him and laid him comfortably in that big show-bed in the front room that was given to any guest of honour.
Morning was breaking when Judith, coming into the kitchen, found Andy and Jeff sitting by the fire, and Dilsey Rust in charge.
“Yo’ uncle sont fer me,” the old woman said. “He ’lowed he needed yo’ he’p takin’ keer o’ Bonbright.”
Judith sat with Creed while the others had breakfast. When her uncle went out, closing the door softly behind him, leaving her alone with her recovered treasure, she went and knelt down by the bed, and looked at its silent occupant with a bursting heart.
Here was Creed, Creed for whom she had longed and prayed. He had come back to her. She stared at the wasted face, the transparent temples where the blue veins showed through, the black circles beneath the lashes of the closed eyes. No, no, this was not Creed, this dying man who mocked her longing with a semblance of her lover’s return!