"They carried him home," said Amy, turning round to the light and pressing the beautiful silk coat in against her figure with little kicks at the skirt. "No; I didn't go; Joseph came round and told me. He didn't think the wound was very dangerous--necessarily. One of his hands was terribly clawed." "A panther? In town? In his schoolroom?"-- "You know Erskine keeps a pet panther. I heard him tell Mrs. Poythress it was a female," said Amy with an apologetic icy, knowing little laugh. "And he said this one had been prowling about in the edge of the canebrakes for several days. He had been trying to get a shot at it. He says it was nearly starved: that was why it wanted to eat John whole before breakfast." Amy turned back to the bed and shook out delicately the white muslin dress--the dress that John had hung on the wall of his cabin--that had wound itself around his figure so clingingly. There was silence in the room. Amy had now reached the silk stockings; and taking up one, she blew down into it and quickly peeped over the side, to see whether it would fill out to life-size--with a mischievous wink. "I am going to him at once." Amy looked up in amazement. "But, Aunt Jessica," she observed reproachfully; "who will get uncle's dinner? You know I can't." "Tell your uncle what has happened as soon as he comes." She had risen and was making some rapid preparations. "I want my dinner," said Amy ruefully, seating herself on the edge of the bed and watching her aunt with disapproval. "You can't go now!" she exclaimed. "Uncle has the horses in the field." Mrs. Falconer turned to her with simple earnestness. "I hoped you would lend me your horse?" "But he is tired; and beside I want to use him this afternoon: Kitty and I are going visiting." "Tell your uncle when he comes in," said Mrs. Falconer, turning in the doorway a minute later, and speaking rapidly to her niece, but without the least reproach, "tell your uncle that his friend is badly hurt. Tell him that we do not know how badly. Tell him that I have gone to find out and to do anything for him that I can. Tell him to follow me at once. He will find me at his bedside. I am sorry about the dinner." XII SEVERAL days had slipped by. At John's request they had moved his bed across the doorway of his cabin; and stretched there, he could see the sun spring every morning out the dimpled emerald ocean of the wilderness; and the moon follow at night, silvering the soft ripples of the multitudinous leaves lapping the shores of silence: days when the inner noises of life sounded like storms; nights when everything within him lay as still as memory.