“Looks bad, doesn't he?” he said cheerfully. “Thought it wasn't the cold. Heart beating too fast, pulse too active. Ah—hot water if you please, Philip!”
He loosened the man's coat and shirt, and a few moments later, when Philip brought a towel and a basin of water, he rose from his examination.
“Just in time—as I said before,” he exclaimed with satisfaction. “You'd never have heard another 'Pierre Thoreau' out of him, Philip,” he went on, speaking the young man's name as it he had been accustomed to doing it for a long time. “Wound on the head—skull sound—loss of blood from over-exertion. We'll have him drinking coffee within an hour if you'll make some.”
The doctor rolled up his shirt sleeves and began to wash away the blood.
“A good-looking chap,” he said over his shoulder. “Face clean cut, fine mouth, a frontal bone that must have brain behind it, square chin—” He broke off to ask: “What do you suppose happened to him?”
“Haven't got the slightest idea,” said Philip, putting the coffee pot on the stove. “A blow, isn't it?”
Philip was turning up the wick of the lamp when a sudden startled cry came from the bedside. Something in it, low and suppressed, made him turn so quickly that by a clumsy twist of his fingers the lamp was extinguished. He lighted it again and faced the doctor. McGill was upon his knees, terribly pale.
“Good Heaven!” he gasped. “What's the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing, Phil—it was he! He let it out of him so unexpectedly that it startled me.”
“I thought it was your voice,” said Philip.