"Know it," asserted Jim Dent, as confidently as he had ever said anything in his life. He smiled at her and hurried on. That smile of his had been known to win games for his college teams which had been all but lost—why shouldn't it cheer a frightened girl and encourage her to go on doing that one thing which was the only thing she could do, and which Jim Dent was so sure would help?
The gray roadster came down the road at a speed which barely allowed it to slacken in time to make the curve at the gateway. It missed the stone post on the left by the width of a tenpenny nail. Sylvester, in the rumble, turned not a hair. Thirty miles of driving, with Sam's hand on the steering-wheel, had brought Sylvester to a condition of temporary paralysis as regarded danger.
The three of them were in the house in less time than it takes to tell it, Dr. Wilford Graham propelled by a hand on each arm. It would have been difficult for him to say which of his companions seemed the more eager to get him up the stairs.
Samuel opened the door of the room where he had left young Syl, his hand shaking on the knob. A somewhat feeble but decidedly cheerful voice greeted him.
"Say, dad, you'll tell me where I tumbled from, won't you? The rest of 'em have got me stung about it."
Samuel turned around to the doctor behind him. He pushed past the doctor and bolted out into the hall. He bumped smartly into his brother Sylvester, who had stopped to wait just outside the door. Sylvester put his hand on Samuel's shoulder.
"I heard, Sam, I heard," he murmured.
Samuel nodded. He could not speak. There was no particular need that he should.
Young Syl had a broken arm. But what is a broken arm, when by acquiring it one escapes injuring some vital part of one's body? He had, also, a large-sized contusion on his head, because on the rebound he had come somewhat forcibly into contact with the newel-post. But the contusion was precisely on the spot specially fortified by Nature for such emergencies, and the doctors feared no evil results from it.
"In short," declared Doctor Graham with great satisfaction, "the boy has managed to get out of his fall easier than many a football victim who is thrown only the distance of his own height. I won't say that a Turkey carpet with a leopard-skin rug on top of it doesn't make a fairly comfortable bed to fall on. If it had been one of our modern bare floors, now!—But it wasn't."