“Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try.”
The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question who he was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her arms jealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she was afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted gently and in the end she gave him place beside her.
He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen at the man’s breast.
Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life, certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man’s pockets for the knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly.
“It was just a little while ago,” she answered, in short, frightened sentences. “My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must be I hurt him; he 12 fainted. I can’t make him speak. I cut boughs and made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can’t make him speak. Is he?–– Is he?–– Tell me,” she appealed.
The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man’s jacket and shirt.
“You were all alone, child?” he said. “Where could you get the strength for all this? My driver is out on the road,” he continued, as he worked on. “Call him and send him for the nearest help.”
The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the man on the couch, went out into the snow.
The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.
The man’s shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on that side.