Then the horseman left the old hillwoman berating her son mercilessly, and rode toward the basin's bottom.
"Now, little lady," he said when they had come to level ground, "I'll take you to your mother in short order. I'm afraid to try to take you to Johnsville; it would probably be too much for you. It'll be all right for you to go home. Your father is sorry he was so hasty with you."
Tot stared wide-eyed into his patrician old face. Her spirit fluttered up quickly.
"I want to go back to Mis' Mason," she told him.
"Oh!" smiled the colonel. "Back to Mrs. Mason, eh? Very well. Perhaps it would really be better. You may need the services of a doctor, and you couldn't get one out here—though I'd never dare to tell Granny Wolfe that! And I fancy, little lady," he added pleasantly, "that Mrs. Mason will be right glad to have you back."
They soon met young Wolfe, who had just ridden through Devil's Gate. He heard the story as they rode toward Johnsville, and made no comment, though there was a glint in his eyes that his foster-father hadn't been accustomed to seeing there.
Mrs. Mason saw them coming, and called the doctor by phone. Then she ran to make ready the bed in the blue-and-white room upstairs.
It was a case of utter physical exhaustion and high nervous strain, the doctor said; there was some fever now, and would doubtless be more before morning. Tot watched him as though she were not the least interested. After an hour, Doctor Rice left medicine and directions for giving them, and turned homeward.
Another hour went by. The patient spoke to the anxious-faced little woman who sat at her bedside.