“And how did you escape?”

“I don’t know.  I got out the best way I could.  First thing I knew I was lying on the grass and some one was pouring water over my head; then they got me home and put me to bed.”

“And MacFarlane?”

“Oh, he came along with me.  I had to help him some.”

Peter heaved a sigh of relief, then he asked: 

“How did it happen?”

“Nobody knows.  One of the shanty men might have dropped a box of fulminates.  Poor fellow,—­he never knew; they could find nothing of him,” Jack whispered behind his hand so Ruth would not hear.

“But when did you get out of bed?” continued Peter.  He was less anxious now.

Jack looked at Ruth and again lowered his voice; the sound of the carriage preventing its hoarse notes from reaching her ears.

“About half an hour ago, sir; they don’t know I have gone, but I didn’t want anybody to frighten Miss Ruth.  I don’t look so bad, do I?  I fixed myself up as well as I could.  I have got on Bolton’s hat; I couldn’t get mine over the bandages.  My wrist is the worst —­sprained badly, the doctor says.”

If Ruth heard she made no answer, nor did she speak during the ride.  Now and then she would gaze out of the window and once her fingers tightened on Miss Felicia’s arm as she passed in full view of the “fill” with the gaping mouth of the tunnel beyond.  Miss Felicia was occupied in watching Jack.  In fact, she had not taken her eyes from him since they entered the carriage.  She saw what neither Peter nor Ruth had seen;—­that the boy was suffering intensely from hidden wounds and that the strain was so great he was verging on a collapse.  No telling what these foolish Southerners will do, she said to herself, when a woman is to be looked after,—­but she said nothing of all this to Ruth.

When the carriage stopped and Ruth with a spring leaped from her seat and bounded upstairs to her father’s bedside, Miss Felicia holding Jack’s hand, her eyes reading the boy’s face, turned and said to Peter: 

“Now you take him home where he belongs and put him to bed; and don’t you let him get up until I see him.  No—­” she continued in a more decided tone, in answer to Jack’s protest—­“I won’t have it.  You go to bed just as I tell you—­you can hardly stand now.”

“Perhaps I had better, Miss Felicia.  I am a little shaky,” replied Jack, in a faint voice, and the carriage kept on its way to Mrs. Hicks’s leaving the good lady on MacFarlane’s porch.

MacFarlane was asleep when Ruth, trembling with excitement, reached the house.  Outside the sick room, lighted by a single taper, she met the nurse whose few hurried words, spoken with authority, calmed her, as Jack had been unable to do, and reassured her mind.  “Compound fracture of the right arm, Miss,” she whispered, “and badly bruised about the head, as they all were.  Poor Mr. Breen was the worst.”

Ruth looked at her in astonishment.  That was why he had not lifted his hat, she thought to herself, as she tiptoed into the sick room and sank to her knees beside her father’s bed.