“Oh, boys, we’ll have to carry him out to the air,” she exclaimed, and by their valiant efforts they got him out of the passage just as twilight darkened the world.
CHAPTER XVII.
“TIME DOES NOT STOP FOR TEARS.”
While the wedding was going on at Wheatlands that evening, Doctor Barnes, hastily summoned to the cottage, was sewing up a ghastly cut on Chester Olyphant’s head, and explaining to Widow Gray that it had barely escaped being a fracture of the skull. Even now he could not tell what the outcome would be, for, though life still lingered, there was no return to consciousness.
He made the four little heroes very proud and happy by telling them that God himself must have prompted their expedition that day in order to save the young man’s life, and they scampered off home in great excitement, to spread the news of their wonderful adventure.
Meanwhile the doctor sent for the best nurse in town, and installed her at the cottage to aid Mrs. Gray in caring for the patient.
But when Leola Mead and her father were driven down to the station that night, to take the midnight train for New York, no hint of the truth reached them, and Leola’s heartache over her lover’s falsity was destined to last long, for from that hour, when she had fallen like one dead in the arbor, no news of him transpired for many months. Too proud to confess her heart wound to her father, she never called that once loved name in his hearing; she only sought refuge from her pain in change of scene, saying to him eagerly:
“Papa, darling, I have been buried in the country so long that I am wild to see the world. If you are able to gratify my desires, I prefer travel to anything else on earth.”
“I live only to gratify your wishes now, my precious daughter,” answered Alston Mead, eager to atone for having neglected her so long in his passionate grief over the loss of his lovely young wife.
He had planned to come back and settle down in a quiet home with his lovely daughter, but he found it no hardship to gratify her desire for travel, since wandering had become a second nature with him.