o come off at the
knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a
frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in
the hands of any physician less skilled and determined than
Westmoreland he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw
set, followed his code and fenced with death for this apparently
worthless and forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to
outwit the great Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's
chance that we were astonished when he turned the corner--very, very
feebly--and we didn't have to place another pine box in the potter's
field, alongside other unmarked mounds whose occupants were other
unknown men, grim causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.

The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
then his eyes came to Clelie and myself, but he did not return the
greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
very feebly, he tried to move,--and found himself a cripple. He fell
back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
lips--a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild
beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself.
Clelie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from
fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful,
inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When
breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and
falling to his choking gasps.

"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I
said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had
helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had
sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a
soul.

He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have
two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me
sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned
his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
creature.

It was not so much physical, h