With a cry of distress Westy knelt beside him and spoke to him tenderly, but there came no answer to his earnest pleadings.
He lifted his father’s head up gently and with a sob that bespoke his anguish realized at once that his father was unconscious, probably dying.
CHAPTER XV—A LIFE IN THE BALANCE
The House of Martin during the next few hours was the scene of much anxiety and despair.
A white-capped nurse was passing in and out of the sick-room, while Westy and his sister sat on the stairway, apprehensive each time that she had come to tell them the worst.
Mrs. Martin, sitting faithfully by her husband’s side, dry-eyed, seemed shaken with grief inwardly and her white face looked haunted with lost hope.
Four hours had passed and still he had not regained consciousness. The doctor was standing, silently gazing down into the darkened street. He turned back toward the bedside and Mrs. Martin, watching his mobile face intently, thought she detected the faintest glimmer of hope pass across his features.
“Another half hour will tell,” he told her, “and if he lives he’ll have his son to thank not only for his life, but for the half-dozen others he saved from being dashed to pieces.”
The doctor, it seems, had witnessed the accident, and sang Westy’s praises for many a long day after.
Archie had left to go home two hours before, saying he was too upset from the ordeal to stand the suspense of waiting. They couldn’t seem to get a coherent account from him as to how Mr. Martin injured his head. He said he couldn’t seem to remember, he was so excited, except that he saw him fall just as Westy jumped on the steps of the runaway bus.