“Oh, hurry, hurry!” she urged. “Perhaps they’ve killed him!”
Reggie needed no urging, and in a moment more they had come within a few feet of the figure that still lay without motion or any sign of life.
Joe and Jim were out of the car like a flash and ran to the side of the victim.
Reggie turned the car into a piece of open woodland at the side of the road, and then he and Mabel descended and joined the others.
The man who had been hit seemed to be nearly seventy years old. His hair was silvery white, except where it was dabbled with blood that flowed from a wound in his head near the left temple. His clothing was shabby and covered with dust. A G. A. R. button was on the lapel of his coat.
As Joe knelt down and lifted the man’s head to his knee, the latter opened his eyes and gave utterance to a groan.
Jim, who had a rough knowledge of surgery from his experience with the accidents that are constantly happening on the ball field, ran his hands deftly over the prostrate form.
“Don’t seem to be any bones broken,” he announced after a moment. “And that cut on the head seems to have come when he struck the road. But let’s carry him over to this patch of grass and bind up his head to stop that bleeding.”
The handkerchiefs of the party were called into requisition and torn into strips from which a bandage was improvised. There was a small brook near by, and Mabel hurried to this for water, with which she bathed the man’s head and face.