"That was his cry! They are killing him! they are killing him!" cried that poor girl, springing to her feet.
Ruth opened the door in rash haste, and her pale face looked in.
"Back! Go back, child!"
It was the impatient voice and white hand of the surgeon that warned Ruth Jessup back; and she shrunk into the darkness again, appalled by what she had seen—her father's gray hair, scattered on the pillow, his face writhing, and his eyes hot and wild with anguish.
It was a terrible picture, but while it wrung her heart, there was hope in the agony it brought. Anything was better than the deathly stillness that had terrified her under the cedars. It was something that her father could feel pain.
"Now," said the kind surgeon, looking through the door, "you can come in. The bullet is extracted."
In his white palm lay a bit of bent lead, which he looked upon lovingly, for it was a proof of his own professional skill; but Ruth turned from it with a shiver, and creeping up to her father's bed, knelt down by it, holding back her tears, and burying her face in the bed-clothes, afraid to meet the wild eyes turned upon her.
The wounded man moved his hand a little toward her. She took it in her own timid clasp, and laid her wet cheek upon it in penitent humility.
"Oh, father!"
The hard fingers stirred in her grasp.