CHAPTER VII.
THE GRIT OF MOSES JONES
An axe flew gleaming through the air and Montgomery vanished, the brass bound box with him.
Katharine was too startled to move, and stood listening to the distressing, almost blood-curdling groans which issued from the man's lips, as, for a moment, he lay face downward before her. Then she recognized the apparel of Moses Jones and bent over him pityingly.
"Why, Uncle Mose! What is the matter?"
For only answer more groans, which presently began to thrill her with an unspeakable terror. What made him do that? What had befallen him? Was he dying, and she alone with him, there in the strange forest? The thought was torture, and, nerving herself to the task, she laid her hand upon him, though her repugnance to the act was a fresh torment. It had always been one of the girl's peculiarities that she could not bear to touch any ailing thing. She would wait upon people who were ill most cheerfully, even eagerly, but she hated to come in personal contact with them. It had been so even in the case of her father whom she idolized, and had been one of the small items in stepmother's list against her. But she had heard so much upon the subject then, and of its enormity, that she had set herself to overcome the failing, since failing it was. And had poor Moses known it, she would almost rather have borne his pain herself than to have helped him turn upon his back as she did. To do more for him than this was impossible, and again she besought him to say how he was hurt.
Finally, he opened his eyes and glanced about him, then angrily shook his fist toward a projecting tree-root which had been hidden from his sight by a group of ferns and over which he had stumbled.
"That's it! That's the mis'able thing 'at done it!" he cried, then groaned again, but weakly. The pain had suddenly become so severe as to turn him faint while the brilliant branches overhead began to dance and sway before his dizzy sight as no wind could make them do. "I—I'm gettin' light-headed. Help me up, Keehoty. I'm broke. I'm broke all to smash. My leg—my side—oh, oh, ouch!"
