“I cum ’s fas’ ’s I could,” she said, “but I reckon I’d orter been here afore. De Lord knows dis is a curi’s ’casion.”
When she crossed the threshold of the cabin, her master pointed to a small faintly moving bundle lying at the foot of the bed over which he was bending.
“Take it into the other room and tell the man to come here,” he said. “There’s no time to lose.”
He still held the weak hand; but the girl’s eyes were no longer closed; they were open and fixed on his face. The great fellow was trembling like a leaf. The past hour had been almost more than he could bear. He was entirely unstrung.
“I wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing,” he had groaned more than once, and for the first time in his life thanked Fate for making him a failure.
As he looked down at his patient, a mist rose before his eyes, blurring his sight, and he hurriedly brushed it away.
She was perhaps nineteen years old, and had the very young look a simple trusting nature and innocent untried life bring. She was small, fragile, and fair, with the pure fairness born of a cold climate. Her large blue-gray eyes had in them the piteous appeal sometimes to be seen in the eyes of a timid child.
Tom had laid his big hand on her forehead and stroked it, scarcely knowing what he did.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said, with a tremor in his voice. “Close your eyes and try to be quiet for a few moments, and then——”
He stooped to bend his ear to her lips which were moving faintly.