For some time he lay there unconscious, and when he came to his senses he could not get up. There was a terrible pain in his left hip, and he called for help, and his mother and some of the colored women ran out and carried him into the house, and when they laid him on a bed he fainted again from the pain. Mr. Radway was sent for, and after he had examined the leg as well as he could, he looked very solemn, for there was no doubt that the bone was badly broken. Even Jack, young as he was, could tell that; but with all his pain he made no complaint. “This is serious business,” Mr. Radway said to his wife when they were out of Jack’s hearing. “The bone is badly fractured at the thigh, and there is not a doctor left in Appalachicola to set it. Every one of them is away in the army, and I don’t know of a doctor within a hundred miles.” “Except on the gun-boat,” Mrs. Radway interrupted; “there must be a surgeon on the gun-boat.” “I have thought of that,” Mr. Radway answered; “but if he should come ashore he would almost certainly be killed, so I could not ask him to come. And if I should take Jack out to the boat, we would very likely be attacked on the way. I must take time to think.” Medicines were scarce in Appalachicola in those days, but they gave Jack a few drops of laudanum to ease the pain, and made a cushion of pillows for his leg. For all his terrible suffering, and the doubt about getting the bone set, he did not utter a word of complaint. But he turned white as the pillows, and the great heat of midsummer on the shore of the Gulf added to his misery. For hours Mr. Radway walked the floor, trying to make up his mind what to do. Jack’s suffering was agony to him, and the uncertainty of getting help increased it. Late in the evening, when all the household were in bed but Mr. and Mrs. Radway, they heard the sound of many feet coming up the walk, then a shuffling of feet on the piazza, and a heavy knock at the front door. “Have they the heart for that?” Mr. Radway exclaimed. “Could they come to attack us when they know what trouble we are in? Some of them shall pay dearly for it if they have.” The knock was repeated, louder than before, and Mr. Radway took up a rifle and started for the door. Standing the rifle in the corner of the wall, and with a cocked revolver in one hand, he turned the key and opened the door a crack, keeping one foot well braced against it. “You don’t need your gun, neighbor,” said the spokesman of the party without; “it’s a peaceable errand we are on this time.” “What is it?” Mr. Radway asked, still suspicious. [Illustration: “COULD THEY COME TO ATTACK US WHEN THEY KNOW WHAT TROUBLE WE ARE IN?”]