"What is the matter? How did this boy get hurt?" asked Ben, sternly, as he leaped upon the wagon, and laid his hand over the injured boy's heart.
"He was standing there close by the guy ropes when we were getting ready to let the canvas down. One of the side poles fell and struck him on the head, or shoulder, I don't know which," replied a man.
"It struck him here on the back of the neck," said one of those who were examining the boy, as he turned him half over to expose an ugly-looking wound around which the blood was rapidly settling. "It's a wonder it didn't kill him."
"He ain't dead, is he?" asked Toby, piteously, as he climbed up on one of the wheels, and looked over in a frightened way at the little deformed body that lay so still and lifeless.
"No, he ain't dead," said Ben, who had detected a faint pulsation of the heart; "but why didn't some of you send for a doctor when it first happened?"
"We did," replied one of the men. "Some of the village boys were here, and we started them right off."
Almost as the man spoke, Dr. Abbott, one of the physicians of the town, drove up, and made his way through the crowd.
Toby, too much alarmed to speak, watched the doctor's every movement as he made an examination of the wounded boy, and listened to the accounts the men gave of the way in which the accident had happened.
"His injuries are not necessarily fatal, but they are very dangerous. He lives at the poor-farm, and should be taken there at once," said the doctor, after he had made a slight and almost careless examination.
Toby was anxious that the poor boy should be taken to his home rather than to the comfortless place the doctor had proposed; but he did not dare make the suggestion before asking Uncle Daniel's consent to it. He was about to ask them not to move Abner until he could find his uncle, when Ben whispered something to the doctor that caused him to look at the old stage-driver in surprise.