"How do you feel now?" asked the doctor.
"Can you hear us? Albert, do you know me?" called the girl.
His lips moved stiffly, but he smiled a little, and at length whispered slowly, "Yes; I guess—I'm all—right."
"Put him into my cutter; Maud, get in here, too," the doctor commanded, with all the authority of a physician in a small village. The crowd opened, and silenced its muttered comments as the doctor and Troutt helped the wounded man into the sleigh. The pain in his head grew worse, but Albert's perception of things grew in proportion; he closed his eyes to the sun, but in the shadow of Maud's breast opened them again and looked up at her. He felt a vague, childlike pleasure in knowing she was holding him in her arms; he felt the sleigh moving; he thought of his mother, and how it would frighten her if she knew.
The doctor was driving the horse and walking beside the sleigh, and the people were accosting him. Albert could catch their words now and then, and the reply:
"No; he isn't killed, nor anything near it; he's stunned, that's all; he isn't bleeding now. No; he'll be all right in a day or two."
"Hello!" said a breathless, hearty voice, "what the deuce y' been doing with my pardner? Bert, old fellow, are you there?" Hartley asked, clinging to the edge of the moving cutter, and peering into his friend's face. Albert smiled.
"I'm here—what there is left of me," he replied faintly.
"Glory! how'd it happen?" he asked of the girl.
"I don't know—I couldn't see—we ran into a culvert," replied Maud.