“I don’t know,” Gabriel lied promptly and with force.  Not for worlds would he have excited her with the truth.  “Never you mind about that.  Just lie still, now, till I come back!”

Already, among the rusty utensils that had served for the “sugaring-off,” the previous spring, he had routed out a tin pail.  He kicked a quantity of leaves in under the sheet-iron open stove, flung some sticks atop of them, and started a little blaze.  Warm water, he reflected, would serve better than cold in removing that clotting blood and dressing the hurt.

Then, saying no further word, but filled with admiration for the girl’s pluck, he seized the pail and started for water.

“Nerve?” he said to himself, as he ran down the road toward a little brook he remembered having crossed, a few hundred yards to southward.  “Nerve, indeed!  Not one complaint about her own injuries!  Not a word of lamentation!  If this isn’t a thoroughbred, whoever or whatever she is, I never saw one!”

He returned, presently, with the pail nearly full of cold and sparkling water.  Ignoring rust, he made her drink as deeply as she would, and then set a dipperful of water on the now hot sheet-iron.

Then, tearing a strip off the shawl, he made ready for his work as an amateur physician.

“Tell me,” said he, kneeling there beside her in the hut which was already beginning to grow dusk, “except for this cut on your forehead, do you feel any injury?  Think you’ve got any broken bones?  See if you can move your legs and arms, all right.”

She obeyed.

“Nothing broken, I guess,” she answered.  “What a miracle!  Please leave me, now.  I can wash my own hurt.  Go—­go find Herrick!  He needs you worse than I do!”

“No he doesn’t!” blurted Gabriel with such conviction that she understood.

“You mean?” she queried, as he brought the dipper of now tepid water to her side.  “He—­he’s dead?”

He hesitated to answer.

“Dead!  Yes, I understand!” she interpreted his silence.  “You needn’t tell me.  I know!”

He nodded.

“Yes,” said he.  “Your chauffeur has paid the penalty of trying to drive a six-cylinder car with alcohol.  Now, think no more of him!  Here, let me see how badly you’re cut.”

“Let me sit up, first,” she begged.  “I—­I’m not hurt enough to be lying here like—­like an invalid!”

She tried to rise, but with a strong hand on her shoulder he forced her back.  She shuddered, with the horror of the chauffeur’s death strong upon her.

“Please lie still,” he begged.  “You’ve had a terrific shock, and have lived through it by a miracle, indeed.  You’re wounded and still bleeding.  You must be quiet!”

The tone in his voice admitted no argument.  Submissive now to his greater strength, this daughter of wealth and power lay back, closed her tired eyes and let the revolutionist, the proletarian, minister to her.