“Thank you,” said Mary, reassured. He would be home in a little bit then and she went back to her pillow.
It was well she could not know that her husband was lost in the woods. The young horse, not well broken to the roads, had strayed from the beaten path. The doctor had first become aware of it when his hat was brushed off by low branches. He dismounted, and holding the bridle on one arm, got down on hands and knees and began feeling about with both hands in the blackness. It seemed a fruitless search, but at last he found it and put it securely on his head. He did not remount, but tried to find his way back into the path.
After awhile the colt stopped suddenly. He urged it on. Snap! A big something was hurled through the bushes and landed at the doctor's feet with a heavy thud. The pommel of the saddle had caught on a grape vine and the girths had snapped with the strain. John made a few remarks while he was picking it up and a few more while he was getting it on the back of the shying colt. But he finally landed it and managed to get it half-fastened. He stood still, not knowing which way to turn. A dog was barking somewhere—he would go in that direction. Still keeping the bridle over his arm he spread his hands before him and slowly moved on.
At last he stopped. He seemed to be getting no nearer to the dog. All at once, and not a great way off, he saw a fine sight. It was a lighted doorway with the figure of a man in it. He shouted lustily,
“Bring a lantern out here, my friend, if you please. I guess I'm lost.”
“All right,” the man shouted back and in a few minutes the lantern was bobbing along among the trees. “Why, Doctor!” exclaimed James Curtis, “have you been floundering around all this time in these woods so close to the house? Why didn't you holler before?”
“There didn't seem to be anything to ‘holler’ at. Until that door opened I thought I was in the middle of these woods.”
“Your wife just telephoned to know if you were at our house and I told her you started home an hour ago.”
“She'll be uneasy. Put me into the main road, will you, and we'll make tracks for home.”
When he got there and had told Mary about it, she vowed she would not let him go to the country again when the night was so pitch dark, realizing as she made it, the futility of her vow. Then she told him of the message that had come in his absence and straightway sent him out again into the darkness.