Eben lay still a few minutes. Then he asked, "What time is it?"
"Just morning. It's getting gray in the east this minute."
"If I could only have got hold of the rope before," said Eben, in a dreaming tone. "I heard them when they first got in, and I was just making a reach for the rope when they stopped me. There were three of them. Did they get away?"
"All but one," replied Jeduthun.
"He mustn't talk any more," said Mrs. Fairchild. "His pulse is nothing now. Keep still, my son, like a good boy!"
"I will!" said Eben. "Only, Jeduthun, if I should die, will you please return Dr. Porter's books, and tell Mr. Francis I did the best I could? He'll scold because the bell-rope wasn't altered, but that wasn't my fault. I read in the spelling book that we shouldn't put off till to-day what could be done to-morrow; or was it the other way?"
"The other way, I guess, but it don't matter," said Jeduthun. "You keep still, and I'll tell the old gentleman all about it. He's kind of wandering in his mind, ma'am," added Jeduthun, in a whisper, in answer to Mrs. Fairchild's look of alarm. "That's nothing strange. Likely enough, he'll be as crazy as a loon before he gets through. I wish the doctor would come."
It was a long hour, with the best speed he could make, before Mr. Barton got back with the doctor. The young surgeon dressed the wound, but looked very grave over it. It was a bad business, and he was afraid the leg would have to be taken off.
"Not if I know it—at least, not till we have had better advice than his'n," said Jeduthun, after the doctor had gone. "Don't you feel too bad, Miss Flora. I've seen more gunshot wounds than ever he did. We'll get Dr. Rose from the Cure; he has been in the army and knows a thing or two, and boss has telegraphed to the old gentleman to bring Dr. Porter over with him. I'd cut a better surgeon out of a pumpkin shell than this fellow, with all his airs. I don't see what Barton got him for."
"Then you don't think there is any danger of Eben's losing his leg?" said Flora, greatly comforted by Jeduthun's contemptuous disparagement of the doctor.