Presently there was the faintest movement. “He is alive! alive!” cried Agnes. “Oh, how thankful I am!”
“He’s alive, sure enough,” said Jimmy O’Neill, “but begorry! I thought him clane gone whin I clapped me eyes on him. Give him a drop more from Black Betty, Archie, and he’ll be comin’ ’round.” True enough in a few minutes Fergus Kennedy opened his eyes with a bewildered stare and attempted to sit up, but he dropped back again too weak for the effort.
“We’ll make a litter of boughs and get him home all right,” Agnes was assured, and very soon the little procession was ready to start back to the settlement, Agnes insisting upon helping to carry a part of the burden.
For many days her father lay in a stupor, and even when roused, he was not able to remember anything of the Indian attack.
“I surmise,” said Joseph M’Clean, “that the Indians fired on him, and that the bullet took away a piece of his cap and gave him that wound in the head. He was able to keep up for a while, but after he grew weaker, he crept off into the bushes where we found him.”
“I don’t see how he escaped the wild animals even if he got away from the Indians,” said Agnes.
“Likely he climbed a tree at first and kept in hiding from both beasts and redskins. The wound brought on a fever, and he tried to get to the water and was too weak and ill to move again. That’s how I sum it up.”
“My father was ever a quiet man, but he is more so now,” Agnes told her friends. And, indeed, it seemed hard to arouse him from his lethargy when his wound was actually healed. He would do patiently enough anything that he was told to do, but seemed unable to plan for himself.
“He’ll get better after a while,” Agnes always said cheerfully, “but I think he’ll get well quicker if we go somewhere else. He seems to dread going to the woods, and trembles if you mention the Indians. I don’t understand it, for he was always so brave.”
“One can’t account for the strange ways of a body hurt,” said Mrs. M’Clean. “Maybe it would be best that you take him back home.”