“What troubles me now is how to get assistance for you. I don’t like to leave you alone, but—Ah! I hear wheels. Some one is coming!”
Sure enough, an old top buggy, drawn by an old gray mare, came clattering around the curve of the road, and in it sat the one person most welcome of any one in the world just now—the village doctor.
“Oh, Doctor Barnes, how glad I am to see you! You see, there’s been an accident,” Leola cried, eagerly, as he drew rein and began to jump nimbly out.
“Yes, my dear girl; I saw the accident from up on the hill, just as I was coming out from a patient’s house, and I got to you as fast as old Dolly would travel. Really, it was a splendid deed of daring!” cried the middle-aged doctor, patting her bright head in a fatherly way as he stooped over the young man.
“Ah, a stranger!” he continued. “Well, how much is he hurt? Cut on the temple, eh? Needs some stitches. Any bones broken, do you think? Wait till I stanch and bind the wound, and then we will see.”
This accomplished, he tendered the use of his arm, and the young fellow got upon his feet without much difficulty.
“Ah, you’re all right—unless there’s some internal hurt. Come, I will put you into my buggy. Your arm on the other side. Leola and I must take you to the nearest house, which happens to be the Widow Gray’s cottage, below here. There I can sew up your wound and leave you in safe hands till we can find out if there’s any internal injuries. All right. Put your head back against the lap-robe. You will come with us, Leola; I may need your help.”
Stranger as the young man was, they could not have taken him to a better place, for Widow Gray was the dearest old woman in the neighborhood. She lived quite alone in a tidy cottage back among a grove of maples, or a “sugar camp,” as the country people called it; for here in the early spring was always produced that toothsome dainty, maple sugar, so dear to the hearts of school children. The widow had a neat spare room that she often let to a summer boarder, and to this white-hung chamber she quickly led Doctor Barnes with his patient, her round face beaming with good-nature as she promised to do all she could for the unfortunate young stranger.
“He will need your best nursing, I fear,” exclaimed Doctor Barnes; for, on getting his patient down upon the bed, he immediately fainted again, and the swoon was so deep that it was difficult to revive him.
“Oh, he is dead!” sobbed Leola; and the thought carried with it such agony that it changed and darkened the whole world to her young heart, so dear had the handsome stranger grown already.