ightened and upset. No need, no need!
What's a broken arm! If it had been his neck, now!"

"I'm not frightened, and I'm not upset!" said Nell indignantly, but with
a smile. "I'm out of breath with running."

"And out of color, too, Nell. No need to run back, my dear. I'll hurry
up and see what's wrong."

He spoke to the cob, who understood every word and touch of his master,
and jolted down the steep road, and Nell followed slowly. She was rather
pale, as he had noticed, but she was not frightened. In all her
uneventful life nothing so exciting, so disturbing had happened as this
accident. It was difficult to realize it, to realize that a great strong
man had been cast helpless at her feet, that she had had his head on her
lap; she looked down at the patch on her dress and shuddered. Was she
glad or sorry that she had chanced to be near when he fell? As she asked
herself the question her conscience smote her. What a question to arise
in her mind! Of course she should be glad, very glad, to have been able
to help him. Then the man's face rose before her, and appealed to her by
its whiteness, by the weary, wistful lines about the lips and eyes.

"I wonder who he is?" she asked herself, conscious that she had never
seen any one like him, that he was in some way different to any one of
the men she had hitherto met.

As she walked slowly, thoughtfully down the road, a strange feeling came
upon her; it was as if she had touched, if only with the finger tips,
the fringe of the great unknown world.

The doctor, breaking away from the lengthy recountal of Mrs. Lorton,
went upstairs to the spare room, where still sat Mr. Drake Vernon on the
edge of the bed, very white, but very self-contained.

"How do you do, doctor?" he said quietly. "I've come a cropper and
knocked my head and broken some of my bones. If you'll be so good----"

"Take off your coat. My good sir, why didn't you let them help you to
undress?" broke in the old man, with the curtness of the country doctor,
who, as a rule, is no respecter of persons.

"I've given these good people trouble enough already," was the reply.
"Thanks; no, you don't hurt me--not more than can be helped. And I'm not
going to faint. Thanks, thanks."

He got undressed and into bed, and the doctor "went over" him. As he got
to the injured arm, Mr. Vernon drew his signet ring from his finger and
slipped it in his pocket.

"Rather nasty knock on the head; broken arm--compound fractur