The sun was low in the heavens when the good Samaritans and the unconscious man arrived at the foot of the wide, white-pillared Fontenoy porch.  The arrival had many witnesses; for on hearing of the accident the large party assembled for the dancing class had at once dropped all employment and flocked to various coigns of vantage.  A bevy of young girls looked from one parlour window, and another framed Mr. Pincornet’s face and wig and flowered coat.  In the hall and on the porch the elders gathered, while on the broad porch steps young men in holiday dress waited to see if they might be of help.  Around the corner of the house peered the house negroes, pleasurably excited by any catastrophe and any procession, even that of a wounded man borne on a litter.

The cortege arrived.  In the midst of much ejaculation, and accompanied by a fire of directions from Colonel Dick, Lewis Rand was borne up the steps and across the porch into the cool, wide hail.  Here the litter was met by Jacqueline Churchill.  She came down the shadowy staircase in a white gown, with a salver and a glass in her hand.  “The room is ready, Uncle Dick,” she said, in a steady voice.  “The blue room.  Aunt Nancy says you must make him take this cordial.  I have lint and bandages all ready.  This way, Big Jim.  Mind the wall!”

She turned and preceded the men up the stair, along a hallway and into a pleasant chamber hung with blue and white.  “Turn down the sheet, Mammy Chloe,” she directed a negro woman standing beside the bed.  “Quick! quick! he is bleeding so.”

Rand was laid upon the bed, and as the men drew their arms from beneath him, he moved his head, and his lips parted.  A moment later he opened his eyes.  Colonel Dick heaved a sigh of relief.  “He’ll do now!  Gilmer shall come and bleed him, and he’ll be out again before you can say Jack Robinson!  I’ll have that place in the road mended to-morrow.  Yes, yes, Mr. Rand, you’ve had an accident.  Lie still! you’re with friends.  Hey, what did you say?”

Rand had said nothing articulate.  His eyes were upon Jacqueline, standing at the foot of the bed.  The room was in the western wing of the house, and where she stood she was bathed in the light of the sinking sun.  It made her brown hair golden and like a nimbus.  Rand made a straying motion with his hand.  “I did not believe in heaven,” he muttered.  “If I have erred—­”

“Lie still, lie still!” said Jacqueline.  In a moment she turned, left the room, and went downstairs.  “He is better,” she told her cousin Unity, who with Fairfax Cary was waiting in the lower hall; then went on to the library, opened the door, and closed it softly behind her.

The room was dim, and she thought it vacant.  There was an old leather chair which she loved, which had always stood beside the glass doors that gave upon the sunset, in whose worn depths she had, as a child, told herself fairy tales, and found escape from childish woes.  She went straight to it now, sank into its old arms, and pressed her cheek against the cool leather.  She closed her eyes, and sat very still, and tried to ease the throbbing of her heart.  Some one coughed, and she looked up to find her Uncle Edward regarding her from his own favourite chair.