John Hunter stood speechless till the end of the story, and then helped tie the doctor's team. "That all comes from that miserable team! I'm glad one of them did have to be shot. I've half a notion to shoot the other one; it's all cut up by the wire and 'll take no end of trouble to cure. Hugh said horses and dogs talked with their tails, and I guess they do. Say, will you tell Elizabeth about the horse? It's one I got from her father and she's terribly fond of it." Elizabeth met Doctor Morgan as he came from Hugh's room a few minutes later with the unspoken question so plainly evident in her face that he answered it without waiting to be asked. "No signs of further trouble, little woman, thank God! They tell me you were near being run over by that binder too." Elizabeth evaded the last remark. "That's nothing. But are you sure about Hugh?" she asked in a voice that quavered a little. "Now look here," the doctor said, concerned at once for her welfare. "We can't have you go and get upset. It looks as if Noland got out of that pretty lucky. The only thing that's worrying me is that infernal heart of his." John came in at that point and the old doctor addressed himself to him. "This woman'll have to take care of Noland, Hunter, and I want you to see to it that she don't have another thing to do. She can't have that child dragging on her, and we'll have to look out that she don't overdo, or we'll have her down on our hands too. The trouble with peritonitis is that it don't get well as fast as it looks to. A slight thing will often start it up anew, and peritonitis is the devil if it gets to recurring." "We'll all help take care of Hugh," John promised readily. Doctor Morgan looked at John Hunter and back to Elizabeth dubiously. He reflected that the same lack of caution which had killed the mare yesterday might kill a man in case of excitement. "It isn't necessarily help that she's going to need. It won't be so hard to take care of him, if she isn't worried by a lot of other things. I don't want another soul to touch that medicine. We've got to be mighty careful about that. Heart remedies are poison and as quick as lightning in their action, and we can't afford to take any chances on that kind of stuff. I'm right glad to put your wife at the helm in this thing; she's definite and dependable, two things we doctors don't often find when we need them most." Turning to Elizabeth he said: "It may be rather hard on you, but our main care is to pull this man through the next ten days. If he don't have some one to look after him right, he may slip through our fingers." "Why--I thought you said he was all right," Elizabeth faltered. In his efforts to impress the need of care with the medicine, Doctor Morgan had gone over the mark and added to the fears he had started out to allay. Elizabeth was as white as if all the blood in her body had been taken away.