ulders of her father. Plainly she was
afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted
gently and in the end she gave him place beside her.

He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen
at the man's breast.

Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life,
certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for the
knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly.

"It was just a little while ago," she answered, in short, frightened
sentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father
had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned
down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told
me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must
be I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs and
made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak.
Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me," she appealed.

The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man's
jacket and shirt.

"You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get the
strength for all this? My driver is out on the road," he continued, as
he worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help."

The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the
man on the couch, went out into the snow.

The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.

The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there
to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper
ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were
caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them
must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on
that side.

The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled
outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little,
and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula.

He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a
little black ball of steel.

While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a
long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so
slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes
opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop
thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back
naturally to a realisation of things.