No need of that request. Relieved of his precious burden, Apache sped away for the stable, his duty faithfully performed. There many willing hands cared for him while his little mistress, the excitement, fatigue and cold having completed Miss Woodhull’s cruel work, was tenderly carried into the house by old Abel and her uncle, the latter muttering:
“It’s some of that damned woman’s work! I know it is, and I’ll bring the whole school down about her ears unless I find out the truth of it all. My little girl! My little girl! Over thirty-five miles in the dead of night, alone and nearly frozen. Mary! Mary! Mammy! Everybody come quick and phone for Doctor Marshall!”
But Beverly was not dying, and within an hour, under her mother’s and good old Mammy Riah’s ministrations, was warm and snug in her bed, though weak and exhausted. When the doctor came he ordered absolute quiet and undisturbed rest. “She will soon drop off to sleep, and let her sleep for hours if she can. She is utterly worn out and as much from nerve strain as physical fatigue if I know anything of symptoms. What happened, Seldon?”
“The good Lord who brought her through it only knows, for I don’t, though I mean to learn as soon as that child is in a condition to tell me. And then by the great guns something’s going to let loose. I’ve talked with that stone image of a woman at Leslie Manor and I know what it can say. It isn’t a woman; It’s a blight upon the sex: A freak: It’s stone, and when lightning strikes stone something bursts to smithereens. And by all that’s powerful the lightning’s going to strike this time. Thirty-five miles all alone in the dead of the night. Marshall I’m all bowled over. Good Lord! Good Lord!” The Admiral paced the library like a caged lion.
“A woman without children is only half a woman,” sputtered fat little Doctor Marshall. “I’ll be in again toward evening. Don’t worry about her, for she’ll come out all right. She has a constitution like India rubber.”
“Well may the Lord help that old maid if she doesn’t!” was the Admiral’s significant answer.