“Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'.”
Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.
Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been unconventional in the extreme. “Back, you devils!” he had rendered with explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo of her own cry when in peril, “Mortimer!” There must have been a foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it not.
Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must remain at Ringwood for a few days.
It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety, had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery, was marvelous.
XII
Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple of days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee. It happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his presence the same evening that Crane was there.
Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed this trend with no little trepidation of feeling.