“Give her to me, Leà,” he said. “Come, Mignon! Don’t cry, child; he’s not hurt so bad; he’ll be all right in the morning. Move away there, all of you!” and he led the sobbing girl from the room.
A dull, paralyzing silence fell upon us all. Those of us who knew only the gentle, kind-hearted, always courteous Lemois were dumb with astonishment. Had he, too, received a crack on his head which had unsettled his judgment, or was this, after all, the real Lemois?
The opening of the door and the hurried re-entrance of Louis, followed by the doctor, a short, thick-set man with a bald head, for a time relieved the tension.
“I was on my way near here when your messenger met me,” called out the doctor with a nod of salutation to the room at large as he dropped into a chair beside the sufferer, thus supplanting Brierley, who during Lemois’ outburst had been wiping the blood-stained face and lips with a napkin and finger-bowl he had caught up from the table.
There was an anxious hush; the men standing in a half-circle awaiting the decision; the doctor feeling for broken limbs, listening to his breathing, his hand on the boy’s heart. Then there came a convulsive movement and the wounded man lifted his head and gazed about him.
The doctor bent closer, studied Gaston’s eyes for a moment, rose to his feet, tucked his spectacles into a black leather case which he took from his pocket, and said calmly:
“I think there’s no fracture of the skull. I’ll know definitely later on. He is, as I at first supposed, suffering from shock and has swallowed a lot of dust. He must have complete rest; get him to bed somewhere and send for a woman in the village to take care of him. I’ll come to-morrow. Who carried him in here?”
Louis nodded his head.
“Then pick him up again and, if Monsieur Lemois is willing, put him in the room on the ground floor at the end of the court. I can get at him then from the outside without disturbing anybody. You, gentlemen, so I hear, are down here for your pleasure and not to run a hospital, and so I will see you are not disturbed.”
Louis leaned down, picked the young fisherman up in his arms with no more effort than if he had been handling a bag of flour, and carried him out of the room, across the court, Leà following, and into the basement chamber, where he laid him on the bed, leaving him with the remark: