“Good Lord!” he said, turning on his side and addressing some unseen presence representing the vexed question. “Don’t keep a man awake: settle it yourself.” And finally sank into unconsciousness in the midst of his mental struggle.
About the middle of the night he awakened. He felt that something had startled him from his sleep, but could not tell what it was. A few seconds he lay without moving, listening, and as he listened there came to his ear the sound of a horse’s feet, treading the earth restlessly outside the door, the animal itself breathing heavily as if it had been ridden hard; and almost as soon as he aroused to recognition of this fact, there came a sharp tap on the door and a man’s voice crying “Hallo!”
He knew the voice at once, and unexpected as the summons was, felt he was not altogether unprepared for it, though he could not have offered even the weakest explanation for the feeling.
“He’s in trouble,” he said, as he sat up quickly in bed. “Something’s gone wrong.” He rose and in a few seconds opened the door.
He had guessed rightly; it was the stranger. The moonlight fell full upon the side of the house and the road, and the panting horse stood revealed in a bright light which gave the man’s face a ghostly look added to his natural pallor. As he leaned forward, Tom saw that he was as much exhausted as was the animal he had ridden.
“I want to find a doctor, or a woman who can give help to another,” he said.
“There ain’t a doctor within fifteen miles from here,” began Tom. He stopped short. What he saw in the man’s face checked him.
“Look here,” he said, “is it your wife?”
The man made a sharp gesture of despair.