Colby began crawling. He was mangled as if by an explosion, but instinct drove him. Twice he fainted and recovered dim consciousness and still dragged himself tediously along.
Glory was alone in her house. Her father, who had been living with her of late, had gone to the county seat overnight.
The young woman sat in silence, and the sewing upon which she had been busied lay in her lap forgotten. In her eyes was the far-away look of one who eats out one’s heart in thoughts that can neither be solved nor banished.
Then she heard a faint call. It was hardly more than a gasped whisper, and as she rose, startled, and went to the door she saw striving to reach it a shape of terrible human wreckage.
Sim Colby’s clothes were almost torn from him and blood, dried brown, and blood freshly flowing, mingled their ugly smears upon him. His lips were livid and his face gray.
Glory ran to him with a horrified scream. She did not yet recognize him, and he gasped out a plea for whisky.
With the utmost effort of her young strength she got him in, and managed to straighten out the mutilated body with pillows under its head.
But after a little the stimulant brought a slight reviving, and he talked in broken and disjointed phrases.