He rose up and came out into the sunlight, went to the well head, sat down on the frame and removed his shoe and sock. The mark of the bite was there between the adductor tendons. A red hot iron and a bottle of whisky might have saved him. He had not even a penknife to cut the wound out--He thought of Phyl, she could do nothing. He thought of the bar of the Charleston Hotel, and the verse of the song about the old hen with a wooden leg and the statement that it was just about time for another little drink, ran through his head. Then suddenly the idea came to him that there might possibly be help at the village where he had obtained the food from the coloured woman. It was a long way off, but still it was a chance. He put the sock in his pocket, put on the shoe and started. He ran for the first couple of hundred yards, then he slackened his pace, then he stopped holding one hand to his side. The poison already had hold of him. The game was up and he knew it. It was useless to go on, he would not live to reach the village or reaching it would die there. And every one would pity him with that shuddering pity people extend to those who meet with a horrible form of death. Death from snake bite was a low down business, it was no end for a Grangerson; but there in the swamp to the left a man might lie forever without being found out. He turned from the road to the left and walked away among the trees. The ground here sank beneath the foot, a vague haze hung above the marsh and the ponds. Here nothing happened but the change of season, night and day, the chorus of frogs and the crying of the white owl amidst the trees. CHAPTER VII Miss Pinckney and Phyl left Grangersons next morning at seven o'clock to return to Charleston. During the night the Colonel had sent after the horses and they had been captured and brought back. The broken phaeton was left for the present. "I'll make Silas go and fetch it himself when he comes back," said the Colonel. "I reckon the exercise will do him good." "Do," said Miss Pinckney, "and then send him on to me. I reckon what I'll give him will help him to forget the exercise." On the way back she said little. She was reckoning with the fact that she had deceived Richard. Now that everything had turned out so innocently and so well she decided to tell him the bare facts of the matter. There was nothing to hide except the fact of Phyl's stupidity in going with Silas. Richard Pinckney was not in when they arrived but he returned shortly before luncheon time and Miss Pinckney, who was waiting for him, carried him off into the library. She shut the door and faced him. "Richard," said Miss Pinckney, "Seth Grangerson is as well as you are. I didn't go to see him because he was ill, I went because of Phyl. She did a stupid thing and I went to set matters right."