“Ah, I thought I was right!” he exclaimed; then added, with a brusque gravity, “The pity of it is that there is so little sense in worrying; you can’t help or hinder things by lying and stewing over them, but you very seriously retard your own recovery. Now, are you going to be sensible enough to banish worry and go to sleep, or am I to dose you with a sleeping draught?”
For answer Nell turned her head slightly, closed her eyes, drooping into her pillow in such a fashion that the doctor went away satisfied as to her power to sleep unaided by drugs.
CHAPTER XXII
The Fate of the Prisoner
“THEY are a lawless lot, those Settlement men, and Sam Peters says the crowd known as the Syndicate are the worst of the lot,” said Mrs. Nichols, one afternoon a week later, when, her housework being done, she came to sit with Nell, who was resting on the couch which stood under the window in the cheerful little sitting-room.
Very much of an invalid was Nell, for the fright or the shock, or the secret trouble which she could not keep wholly in abeyance, had pulled her down until she was but a wan shadow of herself.
She could talk again, although her words came with a halting slowness which made the doctor frown when he heard her, just as he frowned when she described the noise in her injured ear, which sometimes was so great that she could hear nothing else on that side. But he told her she would be better in time, so she was trying to bear the discomfort patiently.
She glanced up with quick inquiry in her face, at the remark made by Mrs. Nichols about the men of the Settlement.
“Why do you think they are so lawless?” she asked, her heart beating a little faster, for this was the first time since her arrival that Mrs. Nichols had shown any desire to gossip.
“Because of the way they took the law into their own hands last week, about that fellow you chained up in the coffin,” replied the stout woman, holding her head very much on one side while she contemplated a patch which did not look straight.