CHAPTER LIV
While the young farmer and the two hired men labored in the rain that came as a deluge upon the gale’s heels, Mrs. Laight saddled and bridled a horse and forced it through the world of storm and across the barriers of blown-down trees into Kensico Village for Doctor Brockholst.
By the time he arrived the broken body of RoBards was stretched upon the couch in the library. The master’s bedroom had been cracked open by the fallen tulip tree and the rain was thundering through it.
The doctor, seeing the state of his patient and all his red wounds and hearing the groans he could not stifle, first checked the outlets of his blood, then made ready to give him ease of pain.
Old RoBards was as eager for the anæsthetic as a starved infant for its mother’s milk, but he suddenly bethought him of his need of all his wits, and he gasped:
“If—if you make me sleep, I may—may nev-never wake up, eh?”
Doctor Brockholst tried to evade a direct answer, but RoBards panted:
“I won’t risk it—risk it. I’ve sent—I’ve sent Laight to tele-telegraph my son to come up from—from town. There’s things I must say to him—before—before——”
He was more afraid of unconsciousness than of pain, and he would not gamble with a palliation of his anguishes. He chattered to the doctor:
“Just stay here and let me talk. It helps to keep me from making an old fool of myself. And don’t let me die till Keith comes. Don’t let me die till—oh, oh!—Oh, God! oh, God!”