“I didn’t know wher’ Will ’ud be. If I’d called folks, an’ he’d got around an’ found ’em here–––”
“Why didn’t you fetch him?” Peter broke in.
“I come in jest after he’d gone out, an’–––”
“Found––this?” Peter indicated Eve.
“Yes.”
Jim suddenly looked up, and his fierce eyes encountered Peter’s. The latter’s tone promptly changed.
“How is she?” he asked gently, and it was evident he was trying to banish the thoughts which Elia’s statement had stirred in Jim’s mind.
“Coming to,” he said shortly, and turned again to his task of bathing the injured woman’s forehead.
But it was still some minutes before the flicker of the girl’s eyelids proved Jim’s words. Then he sighed his relief and for a moment ceased the bathing and examined 164 the wound. Then he reached a cushion from one of the kitchen chairs and folded it under her head.
The wound on her forehead was an ugly place just over her right temple, and there was no doubt in his mind had it been half an inch lower it would have proved fatal. He knelt there staring at it, wondering and speculating. He glanced at the corner of the box, and the thought of Eve’s height suggested the impossibility of a tumble causing such a wound. Suspicion stirred him to a cold, hard rage. This was no accident, he told himself, and his mind flew at once to the only person who, to his way of thinking, could have caused it. Will had left her just as Elia came in; but Peter’s voice called him to himself.