The girl’s gaze, fixed wistfully on the leafy treetops above her, suddenly dropped to earth.  A man’s figure was stumbling along the little path which led diagonally from the back of the Birch premises through a gateway and off toward a back street, the route by which Lanse was accustomed to take an inconspicuous short cut toward the locomotive shops, by the river.

For an instant, only the similarity of the figure to Lanse’s struck her, for the wavering walk and bandaged head, with hand pressed to the forehead, did not suggest her brother.  At the next instant the man lifted a white face, and Charlotte gave a startled cry as she saw that it was John Lansing himself, in a sorry plight.

She ran to him.  His head was clumsily tied up in a soiled cloth, which the blood was beginning to stain.  As she put her arm about him he smiled wanly down at her, murmuring, “Thought I couldn’t make it—­glad I have.  No—­not the house—­Doctor’s office.  Don’t want to scare Celia.  It’s nothing.”

It might be nothing, but he was leaning heavily on his sister’s strong young shoulder as they crossed the threshold of Doctor Churchill’s little office, Charlotte having flung open the door without waiting to ring.  Nobody was there.

“No, don’t try to sit up in a chair.  Here, lie down on the couch,” she insisted, and Lanse yielded, none too soon.  His face had lost all colour by the time he had stretched his tall form on the wide leather couch which stood ready for just such occupants.

Charlotte went back to the door and rang the bell; then, as nobody appeared, she explored the lower part of the house for Mrs. Fields in vain.

Returning, she caught sight for the first time of a little memorandum on the doctor’s desk:  “Out.  Return 10:30 A.M.” She glanced at the clock.  It was exactly quarter past ten.

She studied her brother’s face anxiously.  The stain upon the cloth was rapidly growing larger.  She was sure he ought not to lie there with the bleeding unchecked.  She went to the door of the small private office; her eyes fell upon a package labeled “Absorbent Cotton.”  She opened it, pulled out a handful, and went back to her brother.

She lifted the cloth from his head, and saw a long, uneven gash, from which the blood was freely oozing.  Taking two rolls of cotton, she laid one on each side of the wound, forcing the edges together.  After a little experimenting she found that by holding her cotton very firmly and pressing in a certain way, the flow of the blood was almost completely checked.

“Does that hurt?” she asked Lanse.  He nodded without speaking, but she did not lighten her pressure.  She saw that he was very faint.

“I’m sorry it hurts you, dear,” she said, “but it stops the blood when I press this way, and I’m sure that’s better for you.  The doctor will be here soon, and I think I’d better hold it till he comes.”

Lanse nodded again, his brows contracting with pain, not only from the pressure upon the wound, but from the reaction from the blow which had caused it.