He struck a match, shielding the flame with his hands. The little flicker threw out shadows high on the piled sawdust and gray ruined walls. We could make out the huge mass of the wheel, the shafts that ran to the story above, the great beams supporting the broken flooring over our heads. The match spluttered and went out, but in that instant it had shown us what we sought, a dark motionless figure lying huddled in the far corner, where the sawdust sloped up in a shadowy drift under the rafters. Herrick reached it first, his feet sinking deep at every step as he scrambled up. I heard him draw his breath in sharply as I struck another match, and by its gleam saw Lessing, one arm doubled under him and the clothes nearly torn from his body, lying unconscious in a saturated pool of blood. Of Mary there was no sign. XXI THE THING IN THE WOODS Together we managed to get Lessing back to the house and laid him on the couch, and while Herrick held the lamp I did the best I could for his injuries with the means at my disposal. It was an ugly job. One arm and shoulder were badly mangled and the collar bone broken; he had lost a great deal of blood and there was a nasty contused wound above the temple. A flicker of consciousness came back while I was working over him, but the loss of blood told, and he lapsed back again almost immediately. There were stitches to be taken; nothing much could be done except to check the bleeding with temporary bandages and as soon as I could manage single-handed Herrick rode off to Lennox for help. In reality it was not long, though it seemed to me an eternity that I kept that nightmare vigil, my ears strained for any sound from without, bending all my will-power on my task to keep me from the one thought that I dared not face, Mary. Where had she gone--what had happened to her? I went over a thousand possibilities, trying to find some reasonable explanation to which I might cling, though as each moment went by the stillness became more and more a torture. If she had merely missed her brother and gone down the road to call for him we should have met her, or she would be back by now. If she had been with him at the mill, or had followed there ... I thought of the deep blackness of the water at the end of the dam, where we had passed that evening, the sheer drop blow the sluice-gates, and shuddered.