In her little room below, Rose, too, lay awake, her youthful mind teeming with wonderful, new ideas garnered from the seeds sown by the "reverend"; but the insistent call of slumber to her tired, healthy body in time lulled her busy thoughts to rest. * * * * * "Oh, Doctor Mac, come _quick_! Grandpappy's hurted." Sound asleep, and even then visioning the girl whose terrified voice suddenly wove itself into the figment of his dream, when the first word fell upon his ears, Donald was wide awake, and he was half out of bed before the last was spoken. He paused only long enough to draw on his hunting breeches and thrust his bare feet into their tramping boots--which left a hiatus of unstockinged muscular calf--hurriedly dropped down the ladder, and in two strides was out of doors. Near the wood pile stood the old mountaineer, on his countenance expression of mingled pain and chagrin, the latter dominating. His right hand still grasped the keen-edged axe, while Rose stood beside him, clasping his brawny left forearm with both of her small but sinewy hands. As Donald approached them on the run he noticed that the girl had sacrificed her treasured hair ribbon to make a tourniquet halfway up the old man's arm, and that blood was running down his hand and falling from the finger tips with slow, rhythmical continuity. "Hit haint nothin' et all, Smiles," Big Jerry was rumbling forth. "Hit air jest er scratch. I don't know how I come fer ter do hit an' I reckon I ought ter be plumb ershamed. Why, Smiles, I been erchoppin' wood fer nigh onter fifty year, an' I haint never chopped myself erfore. Hit war thet tarnation knot. But hit haint nothin', this hyar haint." "Come over to the well where we can give it a wash," was Donald's curt command, and Big Jerry followed him obediently, while the girl hastened ahead and drew up a bucket full of pure, sparkling, ice-cold spring water. The doctor tipped it unceremoniously over the giant's arm, and, as the already coagulating blood on the surface was washed away, made a hasty examination of the slanting, ugly gash beneath. "Superficial wound. No artery or major muscle severed," he announced, as though addressing a class. "Still, you were right in taking the precaution of applying that tourniquet, Rose. I suppose it was bleeding pretty merrily at first." "Hit war spoutin' powerful," she answered, in her stress of excitement lapsing into the language of childhood.