“Where is my father?” I said in a voice hardly audible from terror, seizing Peter’s arm.
Before he could reply, I saw father, white and motionless, upon the ground.
“He is dead!” I shrieked, springing towards him, and convulsively throwing my arms about him.
“He is stunned, not dead, my child,” said the physician, kindly drawing me away, to minister to him. “We hope he will soon be better.”
In spite of his soothing words and tones, I read the truth in his face; that he feared life was almost extinct.
“O, what can I do? Save him! save him! You must not let him die! you must not!”
“My poor child, I will do all I can,” replied the physician, touched by my distress.
But no efforts to restore my father to consciousness availed anything. There was a deep, ugly cut on one side of his head. No other external injury could be found; yet he had not spoken or moved since he was taken out from the broken car.
The accident had occurred but a few rods from the station; and as grandmother’s house was scarcely a mile distant, Peter strongly urged that he should be taken there at once. Accordingly a wagon was procured. The seats were taken out, and a mattress placed upon the bottom, and father was carefully laid upon it; and Peter drove rapidly home, while I followed with the doctor in his buggy. A man had been sent in advance of us to inform grandmother of our coming. She met us at the door with a pallid face, but was so outwardly calm, that I took courage from beholding her.
Father was laid upon a nice, white bed, in a little room on the ground floor; and again every means for restoring him was resorted to. Still he remained unconscious.