ding a wet handkerchief against one of
his temples. He was trying to get these facts fixed in his mind and
connected with past events, when the old woman began to talk.

"There now, great, big, strong man! That bullet never tetched ye! Jest
skeeted along the side of your head and sort of paralysed ye for a
spell. I've heerd of sech things afore; cun-cussion is what they names
it. Abel Wadkins used to kill squirrels that way--barkin' 'em, Abe
called it. You jest been barked, sir, and you'll be all right in a
little bit. Feel lots better already, don't ye! You just lay still a
while longer and let me bathe your head. You don't know me, I reckon,
and 'tain't surprisin' that you shouldn't. I come in on that train
from Alabama to see my son. Big son, ain't he? Lands! you wouldn't
hardly think he'd ever been a baby, would ye? This is my son, sir."

Half turning, the old woman looked up at the standing man, her worn
face lighting with a proud and wonderful smile. She reached out one
veined and calloused hand and took one of her son's. Then smiling
cheerily down at the prostrate man, she continued to dip the
handkerchief in the waiting-room tin washbasin and gently apply it to
his temple. She had the benevolent garrulity of old age.

"I ain't seen my son before," she continued, "in eight years. One of
my nephews, Elkanah Price, he's a conductor on one of them railroads
and he got me a pass to come out here. I can stay a whole week on it,
and then it'll take me back again. Jest think, now, that little boy of
mine has got to be a officer--a city marshal of a whole town! That's
somethin' like a constable, ain't it? I never knowed he was a officer;
he didn't say nothin' about it in his letters. I reckon he thought his
old mother'd be skeered about the danger he was in. But, laws! I never
was much of a hand to git skeered. 'Tain't no use. I heard them guns
a-shootin' while I was gettin' off them cars, and I see smoke a-comin'
out of the depot, but I jest walked right along. Then I see son's face
lookin' out through the window. I knowed him at oncet. He met me at
the door, and squeezes me 'most to death. And there you was, sir,
a-lyin' there jest like you was dead, and I 'lowed we'd see what might
be done to help sot you up."

"I think I'll sit up now," said the concussion patient. "I'm feeling
pretty fair by this time."

He sat, somewhat weakly yet, leaning against the wall. He was a rugged
man, big-boned and straight. His eyes