“Ay, and the good Lord is making him well perhaps though not by the way you planned.  He might a been killed outright, and then what a trouble you’d have been in.”

“This is nearly as bad,” muttered Dudley.

“Now, laddie, don’t harden your heart, are you one of the Lord’s own children?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think I love God as much as Roy does.”

“’Tis an awful bad principle,” the old man continued, “to doubt and complain directly we can’t understand the Almighty’s dealings with us.  He loves Master Roy better’n you and me, and the time will come when we’ll thank the Lord with all our hearts for this accident.”

This was utterly incomprehensible to Dudley.

“I feel very badly about it,” old Principle went on, “and so do you, but the one I’m most sorry for is Ben Burkstone.  I hear say he’s fit to kill himself with despair!”

“Well,” said Dudley, stopping his sobs for a minute; “I don’t see it was his fault; it was the stupid pony; he funked it, and then fell and broke his knees; mine went over all right.  Oh, why didn’t it happen to me!  If I had been spilled, I wouldn’t have minded, and one leg wouldn’t have been half so bad to me as to Roy!”

“I reckon you’d have got your leg all right again without having to lose it.  ’Tis the laddie’s delicate constitution that is so in his way.  But I think you’ll find Master Roy as plucky over the loss of his leg as he ever was.  Now lift your heart up to God and ask Him that he may overrule it all for good.  There goes the shop-bell!”

Old Principle disappeared, and Dudley soothed and comforted by his sympathy, retraced his steps to the house.

Meanwhile Miss Bertram had been going through the trying ordeal of breaking the news to the little invalid.

Roy was lying in bed, flushed and restless.  His eyes looked unnaturally large and bright, as he met his aunt’s anxious gaze.

“I’m so tired of pain, Aunt Judy, and I can’t get to sleep.”

Miss Bertram sat down and smiled her brightest smile.

Taking his thin little hand in hers she said tenderly,

“Yes, dear, you’ve been a brave little patient, but I hope you won’t have much more to bear.  You would like to be free from it, wouldn’t you?”

“Am I going to die?”

“We hope you’re going to get quite well again, if God wills, and if you will be a good boy and let the doctor cure you.”

Roy’s eyes were fixed intently on his aunt now.

“How are they going to cure me?”

Then Miss Bertram nerved herself for the occasion.

“Roy, dear, you have been so patient since you lay here, that I know you will be patient over this.  Doctor Grant says that your leg will never heal as it is, but he is sure you will get well and strong again if—­if you will make up your mind to do without it.”

“Does that mean he is going to cut it off?”