"What is it?" she said, looking about the room with a shiver, as if expecting to see again what she saw there New-Year's night. Archie was alone, however, and, drawing her toward the closet, answered, with an evident effort to be quite calm and steady,-- "Charlie is hurt! Uncle wants more ether, and the wide bandages in some drawer or other. He told me, but I forget. You keep this place in order: find them for me. Quick!" Before he had done, Rose was at the drawer, turning over the bandages with hands that trembled as they searched. "All narrow! I must make some. Can you wait?" And, catching up a piece of old linen, she tore it into wide strips, adding, in the same quick tone, as she began to roll them,-- "Now tell me." "I can wait: those are not needed just yet. I didn't mean any one should know, you least of all," began Archie, smoothing out the strips as they lay across the table, and evidently surprised at the girl's nerve and skill. "I can bear it: make haste! Is he much hurt?" "I'm afraid he is. Uncle looks sober, and the poor boy suffers so I couldn't stay," answered Archie, turning still whiter about the lips that never had so hard a tale to tell before. "You see, he went to town last evening to meet the man who is going to buy Brutus--" "And Brutus did it? I knew he would!" cried Rose, dropping her work to wring her hands, as if she guessed the ending of the story now. "Yes, and if he wasn't shot already I'd do it myself with pleasure; for he's done his best to kill Charlie," muttered Charlie's mate with a grim look; then gave a great sigh, and added with averted face,-- "I shouldn't blame the brute; it wasn't his fault: he needed a firm hand, and--" he stopped there, but Rose said quickly,--"Go on. I _must_ know." "Charlie met some of his old cronies, quite by accident; there was a dinner-party, and they made him go, just for a good-by they said. He couldn't refuse, and it was too much for him. He would come home alone in the storm, though they tried to keep him as he wasn't fit. Down by the new bridge,--that high embankment you know,--the wind had put the lantern out--he forgot--or something scared Brutus, and all went down together." Archie had spoken fast and brokenly; but Rose understood, and at the last word hid her face with a little moan, as if she saw it all. "Drink this and never mind the rest," he said, dashing into the next room and coming back with a glass of water, longing to be done and away; for this sort of pain seemed almost as bad as that he had left. Rose drank, but held his arm tightly as he would have turned away, saying in a tone of command he could not disobey,-- "Don't keep any thing back: tell me the worst at once."