e from this purpose with
the further realisation that first of all Celia must be brought up from
the cold, dark place in which she lay, and restored to consciousness.

She ran to the front door to summon the nearest neighbour, and she
remembered then, with relief, that the nearest neighbour was Doctor
Churchill, the young physician who had been called in to see her mother
the evening before.

She flew across the narrow lawn between her own house and that where the
new doctor had set up his office, and rang imperatively. The door
opened, and Doctor Churchill, hat and case in hand, evidently on his way
to a patient, stood before her.

What he thought of the figure before him, with its riotous curly black
hair, brilliant eyes, pale dark cheeks, dusty pinafore, a singular
smudge upon the forehead, and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, nobody
would have known from his manner, which instantly expressed a friendly
concern.

Charlotte could only gasp, "Oh, come--quick!"

He followed her, stopping to ask no questions. At the open cellar door
Charlotte stood aside to let him pass.

"Down there--my sister!" she breathed.

"Bring a light, please," said the doctor, and he disappeared down the
stairs. Charlotte lighted a little kitchen lamp and came after him. He
bade her stand by while he made his first brief examination.

"I think the blow on her head isn't serious," he said, presently, "but I
can't tell where else she may be hurt till I get her up-stairs."

He was strong, and he lifted Celia as if she had been a child, and
carried her easily up the steep stairs.

Charlotte led the way to a wide couch in the living-room. As Celia was
laid gently upon it she opened her eyes.

Half an hour later, John Lansing Birch, in his oldest clothes and
wearing a rather disreputable soft hat pulled down over his forehead,
with his hands and face excessively dirty and a lunch-pail on his arm,
pushed open the kitchen door. "_Phew-w!_ Something's burning!" he
shouted. "Celia--Charlotte--where are you all? Great Scott, what a
smudge!"

He strode across the room and lifted from the stove a kettle of
potatoes, from which the water had boiled away some minutes before.

"First returns from the amateur cooking district!" he muttered, glancing
critically about the kitchen.

Something else in the way of overcooked viands seemed to assail his
nostrils, and he jerked open the oven door. A tin of blackened rolls
puffed out at him their pungen