The telephone card was not on its hook; it was on the floor.  But Pollyanna found it, and ran her shaking forefinger down through the C’s to “Chilton.”  In due time she had Dr. Chilton himself at the other end of the wires, and was tremblingly delivering her message and answering the doctor’s terse, pertinent questions.  This done, she hung up the receiver and drew a long breath of relief.

Only a brief glance did Pollyanna give about her; then, with a confused vision in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined walls, a littered floor, an untidy desk, innumerable closed doors (any one of which might conceal a skeleton), and everywhere dust, dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to the great carved door, still half open as she had left it.

In what seemed, even to the injured man, an incredibly short time, Pollyanna was back in the woods at the man’s side.

“Well, what is the trouble?  Couldn’t you get in?” he demanded.

Pollyanna opened wide her eyes.

“Why, of course I could!  I’m here,” she answered.  “As if I’d be here if I hadn’t got in!  And the doctor will be right up just as soon as possible with the men and things.  He said he knew just where you were, so I didn’t stay to show him.  I wanted to be with you.”

“Did you?” smiled the man, grimly.  “Well, I can’t say I admire your taste.  I should think you might find pleasanter companions.”

“Do you mean—­because you’re so—­cross?”

“Thanks for your frankness.  Yes.”

Pollyanna laughed softly.

“But you’re only cross outside—­You arn’t cross inside a bit!”

“Indeed!  How do you know that?” asked the man, trying to change the position of his head without moving the rest of his body.

“Oh, lots of ways; there—­like that—­the way you act with the dog,” she added, pointing to the long, slender hand that rested on the dog’s sleek head near him.  “It’s funny how dogs and cats know the insides of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it?  Say, I’m going to hold your head,” she finished abruptly.

The man winced several times and groaned once; softly while the change was being made; but in the end he found Pollyanna’s lap a very welcome substitute for the rocky hollow in which his head had lain before.

“Well, that is—­better,” he murmured faintly.

He did not speak again for some time.  Pollyanna, watching his face, wondered if he were asleep.  She did not think he was.  He looked as if his lips were tight shut to keep back moans of pain.  Pollyanna herself almost cried aloud as she looked at his great, strong body lying there so helpless.  One hand, with fingers tightly clenched, lay outflung, motionless.  The other, limply open, lay on the dog’s head.  The dog, his wistful, eager eyes on his master’s face, was motionless, too.

Minute by minute the time passed.  The sun dropped lower in the west and the shadows grew deeper under the trees.  Pollyanna sat so still she hardly seemed to breathe.  A bird alighted fearlessly within reach of her hand, and a squirrel whisked his bushy tail on a tree-branch almost under her nose—­yet with his bright little eyes all the while on the motionless dog.