“He didn’t bite you?”

“Oh, no, he knew me the minute I spoke.  Sit down here by the fire and don’t be frightened; that’s a good little girl.”

With that James was out by the other door and in the drive beside Gordon, who was still assiduously applying water to the red throat of the prostrate man.  “It is beginning to slack up a little,” he said hoarsely.  “Here, give me the cotton, and see if you can’t get a drop of brandy between his teeth.  They are clinched, but just now he moved a little.  He may be able to swallow.  Aaron, put the team into the wagon, and get a mattress and some blankets from the storeroom.  Hurry, he may come to himself any minute, and he must not stay here any longer than necessary.”  Gordon was working fiercely as he spoke, and James took the cork from the brandy flask, and attempted to force a little between the man’s clinched teeth.  Aaron hurried into the stable and lit another lantern, and went about executing his orders.  James, kneeling over the prostrate man, attempting to minister to him, saw the face fully in the glare of the lantern.  The unconscious face did not look as evil as he remembered it.  He even had a doubt if it were the face of the man who had that evening stood at his horse’s head, and so terrified Clemency.  Then he became convinced that it was the same.  There could be no mistaking the features, which were unusually regular and handsome, but with a strange peculiarity of lines.  It seemed to James that, even while the man was unconscious, all his features presented slightly upturned lines as of bitter derision, intersected with downward lines of melancholy.  All these lines were very delicate, but they served to give expression.  He looked like a man who had suffered and made others suffer for his sufferings, with a cruel enjoyment at the spectacle.  It was a strange face, but not an evil one.  However, after James had succeeded in forcing a few drops of brandy, which were met with convulsive swallowing, between the man’s teeth, he moved again, and his eyes opened, and immediately the evil shone out of the face like a malignant flame in a lamp.  Knowledge of, and delight in, evil gleamed out of the sudden brightness of the man’s great eyes.  Then the evil seemed to leap to rage, as a spark leaps to flame.  He tried to raise himself, and cursed in a choking voice.  He seemed awake most fully to consciousness, and to know exactly what had happened.  The dog in the office sent forth a perfect volley of barks.  The man had been obliged to sink back, but his right hand fumbled feebly for his pocket.

“It is not there,” Gordon said coolly.

“Shoot him, you—­or—­” croaked the man in his voice of unnatural rage.

“Time enough for that,” said Gordon.  He spoke coolly, but James saw him shaking as if with the ague.  He was deadly white, and his whole face looked drawn and withered.  Aaron came leading the team harnessed to the wagon out of the stable.  He had brought down the mattress and blankets, as the doctor had directed, and the three men after the rude bed had been made in the wagon lifted the man thereon.  He seemed to be conscious, but his muttering was so weak as to be almost inaudible, save for occasional words.