But at the sound of that voice in the wilderness I had found fresh strength, and with a sudden wrench I tore myself from Ephraim's grasp, and with as shrewd a blow as ever this good right arm ever struck, sent him reeling on his heels. He recovered his balance, then, as the cry still came across the white waste of snow, "Howd theer, howd, aw say," I saw Eph.'s right hand seek his belt. There was a dull flash of steel, a sharp, cutting pain on my left side, the feel of soft, warm moisture oh my skin, and I knew no more. CHAPTER VII. RUTH AND JIM. When I returned to my senses, or, as Jim expressed it, "comed back to my know," it was to find myself tucked in bed in my own little room in Pole Moor Manse, snug enough save that the upper part of my left arm seemed big enough for the thigh of an elephant. The knife with which I had been stabbed, by a blow that was probably meant for my heart, had lodged deep in the shoulder, or, as Jim explained to me, the humerus, though, again to quote my friend, "nob'dy but a doctor could see owt humorous about it, but that's what owd Dean ca'd it." The upper arm had swollen to a portentous size, the skin red and inflamed, and the vilely-stinking matter had been drained away by tubes inserted in the wound, I all the while unconscious and babbling about rings and Gretna Green and Burnplatters and bad warps and broken time and Bill's o' Jacks and Belgian hares and I know not what, beside, "enough to make angels weep," Ruth said, "fit to mak' a pig dee o' laughing," Jim declared. It had been deemed necessary to sit up with me, and for the comfort of the watchers the long-settle had been with much difficulty, hoisted to my chamber through the window, the staircase being too narrow to admit of its being brought up that way. As the mists cleared from my mind, which they did slowly, just as I have seen a mist melt away in tiny wisps as the sun gained in power, I became aware of subdued voices by the long, narrow window, under which the long-settle stretched. At first the sound seemed to my ears like the droning of a hive of bees, but as my perception cleared I knew the voices to be those of Ruth and, unless I was greatly mistaken, of the faithful Jim. I was stretched prone on my back, and my left arm was wrapped round and round again with yards of lint and bindings, and burled and throbbed and twitched and stung, and I wondered what ailed it and how I came to be in bed at Pole Moor, with the evening sun shining through the window, and why, in the name of all that was decent and seemly, Ruth and Jim should have invaded the privacy of my own bedroom. I managed, with some pain, to turn my head on the bolster in the direction of the voices, and sure enough there was Jim sat at one end of the long-settle, and though that useful article of furniture was long enough to accommodate half a dozen folk without crowding, there was our Ruth hutched close up to the giant form of my