“Hurt, Peter?”cried Joe, running forward and throwing himself upon his knees beside the injured man.
“A trifle. No bones broken, I believe, but pretty badly bruised and strained, especially the right leg above the knee. I find I can’t walk—at least not just yet.”
“How did you escape the slide?”I asked.
“Why, I had warning of it, luckily. I was up pretty early this morning and was just about to leave the house, when a dab of snow—a couple of tons, maybe—came down and knocked off my chimney. I knew what that meant, and I didn’t waste much time, you may be sure, in getting out. I grabbed my rifle and ran for it. I was hardly out of my door when the roar began, and you may guess how I ran then. I had reached almost this spot when down it came. The edge of it caught me and tumbled me about; sometimes on the surface, sometimes on the ground; now on my face and now feet uppermost, I was pitched this way and that like a cork in a torrent, till a big tree—the one Sox is sitting on, I think—slapped me on the back with its branches and hurled me twenty feet away among the rocks. It was then I got hurt; but on the other hand, being flung out of the snow like that saved me from being buried, so I can’t complain. It was as narrow a shave as one could well have.”
“It certainly was,”said I. “And did you hold on to the rifle all the time?”
“Yes; though why, I can’t say. The natural instinct to hold on to something, I suppose. But how is it you are on hand so promptly? It did occur to me as I lay here that one of you might notice that there had been a slide and remember me, but I never expected to see you here so soon.”
“Well, that was another piece of good fortune,”I replied. “Joe saw the slide come down and rode a four-mile race to come and tell me. We did not lose a minute in getting under way, and we haven’t wasted any time in getting here either. But now we are here, the question is: How are we going to get you out?”
“Where do you propose to take me?”asked Peter.
“Down to our house.”
For a brief instant the hermit looked as though he were going to demur; but if he had entertained such an idea, he thought better of it, and thanked me instead.