Jan could not make sense of the tale. There was nobody lying dead in Deerham, that he knew of. He pushed the crowd round the door right and left to get space to enter. The shop was pretty full already, but numbers pushed in after Jan. Dan had been carried into the kitchen at the back of the shop, and was laid upon the floor, a pillow under his head. The kitchen was more crowded than the shop; there was not breathing space; and room could hardly be found for Jan. The shop was Mrs. Duff's department. If she chose to pack it full of people to the ceiling, it was her affair: but Jan made the kitchen, where the boy lay, his. "What's the matter with him, sir?" was the eager question to Jan, the moment he had cast his eyes on the invalid. "I may be able to ascertain as soon as I have elbow room," replied Jan. "Suppose you give it me. Mrs. Duff may stop, but nobody else." Jan's easy words carried authority in their tone, and the company turned tail and began to file out. "Couldn't you do with me in, as well as his mother, sir?" asked Susan Peckaby. "I was here when he came in, I was; and I knowed what it was a'most afore he spoke. He have been frightened by that thing in the pound. Only a few minutes afore, it had turned my inside almost out." "No, I can't," answered Jan. "I must have the room clear. Perhaps I shall send away his mother." "I should ha' liked to know for sure," meekly observed Susan Peckaby, preparing to resign herself to her fate. "I hope you'll ask him, sir, when he comes to, whether it were not that thing in the pound as frightened him. I took it for some'at else, more's the grief! but it looks, for all the world, like a ghost in the moonlight." "What is in the pound?" demanded Jan. "It's a white cow," responded Susan Peckaby. "And it strikes me as it's Farmer Blow's. He have got a white cow, you know, sir, like he have got a white pony, and they be always a-giving me a turn, one or t'other of 'em. I'd like old Blow to be indicted for a pest, I would! a-keeping white animals to upset folks. It's not a week ago that I met that cow in the road at dusk--strayed through a gap in the hedge. Tiresome beast, a-causing my heart to leap into my mouth!" "If Dan have put himself into this state, and done all this damage, through nothing but seeing of a white cow, won't I baste him!" emphatically rejoined Mrs. Duff. Jan at length succeeded in getting the kitchen clear. But for some time, in spite of all his skill and attention--and he spared neither--he could make no impression upon the unhappy Dan. His mother's bed was made ready for him--Dan himself sharing the accommodation of a dark closet in an ordinary way, in common with his brothers--and Jan carried him up to it. There he somewhat revived, sufficiently to answer a question or two rationally. It must be confessed that Jan felt some curiosity upon the subject; to suppose the boy had been thrown into that state, simply by seeing a white cow in the pound, was ridiculous.