“Fust time I ever see that boy still,” murmured Jasper Parloe.

“Cracky!  He’s pale; ain’t he?” said another man.

Doctor Davison dropped on one knee beside the body as they laid it down.  The lanterns were drawn together that their combined light might illuminate the spot.  Ruth saw that the figure was that of a youth not much older than herself—­ lean, long limbed, well dressed, and with a face that, had it not been so pale, she would have thought very nice looking indeed.

“Poor lad!” Ruth heard the physician murmur.  “He has had a hard fall—­ and that’s a nasty knock on his head.”

The wound was upon the side of his head above the left ear and was now all clotted with blood.  It was from this wound, in some moment of consciousness, that he had traced the word “Help” on his torn handkerchief, and fastened the latter, with the lamp of his motorcycle, to the dog’s collar.

Here was the machine, bent and twisted enough, brought up the bank by two of the men.

“Dunno what you can do for the boy, Doctor,” said one of them; “but it looks to me as though this contraption warn’t scurcely wuth savin’.”

“Oh, we’ll bring the boy around all right,” said Doctor Davison, who had felt Tom Cameron’s pulse and now rose quickly.  “Lift him carefully upon the stretcher.  We will get him into bed before I do a thing to him.  He’s best as he is while we are moving him.”

“It’ll be a mighty long way to his house,” grumbled one of the men.

“I believe yeou!” rejoined Jasper Parloe.  “Three miles beyond Jabe Potter’s mill.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Doctor Davison, in his soft voice.  “You know we’ll not take him so far.  My house is near enough.  Surely you can carry him there.”

“If you say the word, Doctor,” said the fellow, more cheerfully, while old Parloe grunted.

They were more than half an hour in getting to the turn in the main road where she could observe the two green lights before the doctor’s house.  There the men put the stretcher down for a moment.  Jasper Parloe grumblingly took his turn at carrying one end.

“I never did see the use of boys, noway,” he growled.  “They’s only an aggravation and vexation of speret.  And this here one is the aggravatingest and vexationingest of any I ever see.”

“Don’t be too hard on the boy, Jasper,” said Doctor Davison, passing on ahead, so as to reach his house first.

Ruth remained behind, for the old gentleman walked too fast for her.  Before the men picked up the stretcher again there was a movement and a murmur from the injured boy.

“Hullo!” said one of the men.  “He’s a-talkin’, ain’t he?”

“Jest mutterin’,” said Parloe, who was at Tom’s head. “’Tain’t nothi

But Ruth heard the murmur of the unconscious boy, and the words startled her.  They were: 

“It was Jabe Potter—­ he did it!  It was Jabe Potter—­ he did it!”