e drive at the top speed of two terrified horses.

Instinctively Nan turned to the man beside her.

"It's the boys!" she exclaimed. "They said they should fire a salute!
But--but--"

She broke off, amazed to find his arms gripping her tightly, forcing her
back in her seat, holding her pressed to him with a strength that took
her breath away.

It all came--a multitude of impressions--crowded into a few brief
seconds; yet every racing detail was engraved with awful distinctness
upon the girl's mind, never to be forgotten.

She struggled wildly in that suffocating hold, struggled fruitlessly to
lift her face from her husband's shoulder into which it was ruthlessly
pressed, and only ceased to struggle when the end of that terrible flight
came with a jolt and a jar and a final, sickening crash that flung her
headlong into a dreadful gulf of emptiness into which no light or echo of
sound could even vaguely penetrate.

CHAPTER II

Nan opened her eyes in her own sunny bedroom, and gazed wonderingly about
her, dimly conscious of something wrong.

The doctor, whom she had known from her earliest infancy, was bending
over her, and she smiled her recognition of him, though with a dawning
uneasiness. Vague shapes were floating in her brain that troubled and
perplexed her.

"What happened?" she murmured uneasily.

He laid his hand upon her forehead.

"Nothing much," he told her gently. "Lie still like a good girl and go to
sleep. There is nothing whatever for you to worry about. You'll be better
in the morning."

But the shapes were obstinate, and would not be expelled. They were,
moreover, beginning to take definite form.

"Wasn't there an accident?" she said restlessly. "I wish you would tell
me."

"Well, I will," the doctor answered, "if you will keep quiet and not vex
yourself. There was a bit of an accident. The carriage was overturned.
But no one was hurt but you, and you will soon be yourself again if you
do as you're told."

"But how am I hurt?" questioned Nan, moving her head on the pillow with a
dizzy feeling of weakness. "Ah!" with a sudden frown of pain. "It--it's
my arm."

"Yes," the doctor said. "It's your arm. It went through the carriage
window. I have had to strap it up pretty tightly. You will try to put up
with it, and on no account must it be moved."

She looked at him with startled eyes.

"Is it very badly cut, then?"

"Yes, a fragment of glass pierced the main artery. But I have