"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in quick enough."
"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;—"do what you like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,—I can walk, and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but I. Damn the shoulder!—let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"
Mr. Bernard came forward.
"My friends," he said, "I am not injured,—seriously, at least. Nobody need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."
The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had the bone replaced in a very few moments.
"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends and neighbors, leave this young man to me."
"Colonel Sprowle, you're a justice of the peace," said Deacon Soper, "and you know what the law says in cases like this. I a'n't so clear that it won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no."
"I guess we'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel Sprowle,—which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually settled the question.
"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy, and, I'll answer for it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I can tell you, whatever else they are."
The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left the prisoner with him.