nder the shade of a large shock of rye.
While Luther bent to examine the senseless form, John rushed one of the
men frantically off for Doctor Morgan.

"No! Wait--I'll go myself!" he called as the man was driving away, and
flinging himself into the buggy, which Elizabeth had left at the fence,
laid the whip on the back of the frightened Patsie.

It was not till John was halfway to Colebyville that Hugh Noland opened
his eyes. Luther was stooping over him, bathing his face with water from
the jug which Elizabeth had so unconsciously provided. The girl also knelt
at his side rendering such assistance as was in her power, and when Hugh
actually showed signs of being alive she buried her face in her hands and
sobbed with an abandon which Luther Hansen could not mistake. The hired
men had gone to get the leaders, which, being reliable horses, had got
over their fright and were nibbling the fresh grass by the fence. The
other team was completely out of sight. They covered Hugh from the
scorching sun till the men could bring the wagon from the barn, and then
the sad little cavalcade returned to the house with the injured man.

Doctor Morgan arrived with John in his own buggy two hours later, and then
a strange thing was discovered. No bones were broken, and no internal
injuries were in evidence which would necessarily give cause for alarm.
The examination pointed to an excited heart chiefly, the weakest link in
Hugh Noland's system and the place where new troubles centred and
aggravated old ones. That the man's life had not been instantaneously
crushed out was due to the fact that the long steel levers had stuck in
the hard earth and held the machine up. But the trouble with the heart had
been accentuated acutely before the binder had even capsized, for that
horrible nightmare of galloping down upon the girl had evidently begun
what the later catastrophe had carried to a farther and really dangerous
stage.

Hugh was placed in the downstairs bedroom by the men, whose hearts were
wrung at every step they carried him, and, as Luther remarked, because
Elizabeth would have the care of him and stairs were deadly things in case
of sickness.

Doctor Morgan came again before night, intending to stay with the patient
till morning. John met him at the gate. With the feeling that he had been
responsible for this terrible accident to Hugh, whom he loved as he had
never loved any other human being, John had spent an afternoon of agony.