Paralee plunged ahead to carry word to that desolated house that visitors were at hand.
Visitors!
The word means little enough to most people, thought Azalea, but to these strange, stricken people, these people who, as Paralee said, had “almost forgot how to talk,” it must be as the sight of a sail to one upon a desert island. Perhaps they would fear as much as they would welcome it; yet there was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman to the door.
“Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” begged the girl, using the mountaineers’ old phrase of hospitality.
“We will, ma’am,” cried Haystack Thompson, just as if Mrs. Panther herself has spoken. “We’ll be glad to.”
He left Keefe to help the ladies from their mounts, and himself went forward to shake this ghostlike woman by the hand. She was tall and sunburned, thin past belief, and so smitten by the silence and deadness of the days that she looked like a person who had lost some of her faculties. Yet now, with a visible effort, she summoned back her knowledge of what should be done when guests came.
The first glance in the cabin was enough. Its two beds, its rickety chairs and uncovered table, were the whole of the tale so far as furniture went, and a pathetic tale it was. But the tragedy began with the man who lay in one of the beds. His wandering, wild glance fell upon the visitors with something like terror. His yellow skin clung to his bones, and only one side of his body was alive. The other was immovable in the curious half-death of paralysis.
It was Keefe who first went to him, for Mr. Thompson had paused a moment, aghast at the sight.
“You must pardon us for coming to your home, sir,” he said in such a gentle and winning way that no one could have resisted his plea. “It is taking a liberty, we know, but we heard how ill you were and how no doctor could get to you. We are not doctors, but we mean to get you to one if it will do any good.”