DURING all this time the fury of the storm had not abated in the least. That, indeed, had been one of the worst obstacles with which he had contended in mounting the steep to his hut. Immediately upon laying his charge on the floor he had begun to prepare his bed for the guest, but weakness from exhaustion overcame him. He reeled; a red blindness assailed him; and, in spite of a fierce effort to maintain command of his strength and faculties, he found himself plunging headlong upon his bed.

A moan recalled him to consciousness, and it was not until later that he realized the distressing length of time that he had lain unconscious. He remembered that when he fell he was very warm from the exertion of ascending the slope, and that when he awoke he was excessively cold. Furthermore, twilight had come.

Dismayed over the loss of time, he proceeded at once to make his charge comfortable. He prepared his bed for her and placed her upon it. She was still unconscious, but he saw that she was rallying.

He suddenly realized that it was now impossible for him to summon Dr. Mal-bone, for the fury of the storm had been steadily increasing, and the crash of falling trees still sounded above the roaring of the wind. It would be worse than foolhardy for him to brave the storm and the darkness. At any moment she might recover consciousness and find herself alone and suffering in this strange place; and a whole night and day would hardly have been sufficient for him to fetch the surgeon, had that been a physical possibility. So the young man realized that he alone, with no training in the surgeon’s and physician’s art, must take this woman’s life in his hands, and for a long time to come be her physician and nurse, cook and housekeeper, mother and confidant, father and protector.

That realization was sufficiently cruel and taxing, but the ordeal that now confronted him was the most trying of all. He had not yet given any attention to the appearance of his charge, further than to ascertain to what extent she was hurt. When he now lighted a candle and held it to her face, he saw that she was a young and handsome woman.

He noted the high-bred patrician face through the grime, the abundant dark-brown hair, the black brows but slightly arched and nearly meeting between the eyes, the fine nose, the habitual, half-hidden curve of scorn at the corners of her mouth, and the firm, strong, elegantly moulded chin.

It was evident that the man and the woman were father and daughter, for the resemblance between the distorted dead face and the grimy living one was strong; the manifest difference in ages finished the conclusion.

Was she fatally hurt? What if she should die? What effect would the knowledge of her father’s death have upon her? How long would she remain helpless on the couch, held by her injuries; and how long, after her possible recovery, would she be held a prisoner by the impassable condition of the roads? Would she be cheerful and brave through it all?

She was growing more and more restless; wise haste was now the crowning necessity. First of all, she must have suitable clothing, and it must be provided before he made his bungling efforts to set her broken bone. How could he hope to perform this difficult surgical feat with no more knowledge of its requirements than he had secured while serving a few times as Dr. Malbone’s untrained assistant in the mountains, and with the most inadequate understanding of the use of such splints, bandages, needles, and ligatures as Dr. Malbone had given him for his use upon himself in case of an emergency, and with an imperfect knowledge of the narcotics, stimulants, febrifuges, and other medicines with which Dr. Malbone had provided him? The sufferer had youth and superb health; but how could he feel the smallest assurance that, in the event he should secure a knitting of the fracture, crookedness and deformity from improper adjustment would not result? But there was nothing to do but try, and to bring every intelligent force of his nature to the task.

He hoped that she would not regain consciousness before he should make another trip to the scene of the tragedy and secure her luggage. The twilight was deepening. He threw logs on the smouldering fire in the chimney-place and started to leave. He paused a moment at the door to watch his patient. She was again stirring and moaning.

“A sedative would be safer,” he reflected. And then, when he had poured it with great difficulty down her throat, he wondered if he had given her too much, and if it would have a bad effect in depressing her vitality and working against her rallying. He waited until she had become still and quiet, and then hastened down to the road.

The storm had been gradually changing in character. He had expected the snow to wait until the wind had fallen, but a hurricane was still blowing, and snow was coming down in long gray slants. Already it had begun to whiten and fill crevices into which the wind was driving it. It would have been better had he brought a lantern, but there was no time for that; and the wind doubtless would have made its use impossible.

At the wreck he found his axe and cleared away more branches. Only a very faint suggestion of the dead white face peering up at him came through the twilight; and there was work to be done in that quarter to-morrow, however much snow might be lodged and packed in the branches. Soon he found two large and heavy travelling bags, one larger than the other; this, he reasoned, must be the woman’s; his strength to carry both to the hut was inadequate now, and he needed all possible steadiness of nerve for the task ahead. A laborious climb brought him back to the hut with the bag and his axe. By the light of a candle he anxiously read the name on a silver tag attached to the handle of the bag. It was,—“Laura Andros, San Francisco.”

It was with awe and reverence that he opened the bag and in a gingerly fashion drew forth its contents and carefully laid them aside. He had already noted in a vague way that his guest was a woman of wealth and elegance, and he now observed that, although the articles he disclosed were intended in large part for vigorous mountain use, an unmistakable stamp of daintiness and refinement was upon them all.

Having now found garments in which he could make her comfortable after his surgical work was done, he proceeded with the stupendous task that awaited him. He wondered how much precious time he had lost, if any, through sheer dread of his duty. But whatever the delay, and whatever its causes, it had been useful in preparing him for the ordeal. Up to this moment an unaccountable and distressing trembling of all his members at frequent intervals had alarmed him, but strength and steadiness came with his nearer approach to the task.

Commanding his soul to meet the need of the hour, he went sturdily about his work. He knew how desperately painful were operations for the setting of fractured bones, and how great was the skill required for the administering of an anÆsthetic. He had never known even a skilled surgeon to undertake alone what he must now do without either skill or assistance. It would not be sufficient should he do his best: his best must be perfectly done.

He produced his store of splints, bandages, stimulants, and anaesthetics, and arranged them conveniently to hand, as he had seen Dr. Malbone do. He examined his patient’s pulse; it was too quick and weak to give him high confidence. He made a good fire, for the night was cold; and he called heavily upon his store of candles to furnish as much light as possible.

His bed, upon which she lay, was a most crude and inadequate affair. It was of his own construction, and had been intended to serve its part in the life of severe austerity that he had made for himself in the mountains. It was made of rough boards nailed to wooden posts. To serve for mattress, fragrant pine-needles filled it. Upon this were spread sheets and blankets. The pillow also was made of pine-needles. Thus, without springs, the bed was hard and unfit for a daintily reared woman; more so because of the illness that she would suffer and the great length of time that she would be confined to the bed; but it was the best he had. As the hut was very small and had but one room, this bed had been fitted snugly into a corner. Wilder moved it out, that he might be able to work freely on both sides of it. This cramped the hut all the more.

The examination that he had made in the road was for the purpose of discovering broken bones. There he had found the bone of the left thigh broken at some undetermined point between the knee and the hip. But broken bones are not all the hurts that one may receive in such an accident,—cuts and contusions might prove equally dangerous if overlooked.

With exquisite care he prepared her for the work that he must do. As she was fully dressed, this required patience from his unskilled hands. Finally, this part of the task, inexpressibly hard for a man of his delicacy of feeling, was accomplished. What anguish he suffered on his own account and in foreseeing her confusion and possible resentment upon realizing that he, an utter stranger, and not a physician, had done all this for her, it were idle to set forth here.

To his great relief he found that the bone of the left thigh was, so far as he could judge, the only one that had suffered fracture; but a careful inspection revealed several bruises; and at last, in searching for the source of the blood that had covered her face when he drew her from the dÉbris, he found a cut in her crown. His first work must be there.

Covering her comfortably, he washed the blood from her hair and face, and, bearing in mind the pride that she must have cherished for her glorious hair, he quickly shaved as small a space on her crown as possible. He first tried adhesive plaster to bring the edges of the cut together; but the water and his handling of the wound started the hemorrhage afresh, and this compelled him to close the wound with ligatures.

He was pleased to observe that the hemorrhage was stopped. This made him so well satisfied and so confident that the greater magnitude of the remaining work appalled him less. Indeed, that had begun to exercise a scientific fascination that abnormally sharpened his wits and steadied his nerves. It was this task that he now attacked.

All this time the sufferer had lain unconscious. This was a blessing, unless the state had been induced by causes worse than consciousness of the pain from setting the bone. There was time hereafter to consider all that. The one present duty was to proceed with the operation without another moment’s delay, for inflammation had already set in.

While, with infinite care, he was fitting, as best he could, the ends of the broken bone, he was startled out of all self-command by a scream of agony from her, half-strangled, and therefore made all the more terrifying, by the bandage under her chin; and she was sitting up, staring at him. Every one of the young man’s faculties was temporarily paralyzed. A benumbing coldness was upon him. With a mighty effort he gathered himself up, but his breathing was difficult, and sweat streamed down his face. He firmly laid her back upon the pillow, and said,—

“Be quiet; you shall not be hurt again.” She was singularly docile, although he could see by the wildness of her eyes and a fluttering in her throat that something was raging within her. With one hand he gently pressed her eyelids down, and with the other he wetted a handkerchief from a bottle of chloroform and held it just clear of her mouth and nostrils. For a moment she rebelled against the stifling vapor and tried to drag his hand away; but, finding him determined, she yielded, and soon was stupefied.

The work must be rapid now. There was no time to wonder if she had comprehended anything or seen in him a stranger. No interruption could come from her now; that was the vital thing; but the anaesthetic would soon lose its force. He resumed his work, taking great care, in matching the injured member with the sound one, to avoid crippling her for life. He then adjusted the splints, keeping the member straight. Finally, he secured it against bending at the knee by adjusting a board on the under side of the leg throughout its entire length. He finished his work by binding the upper part of her body to the bed-frame, to prevent her rising. Then, extinguishing his candles, making her as comfortable as possible on the hard bed, and putting more wood on the fire, he sat down to watch. Everything seemed to be going well.

By this time the night was far advanced. The wind was still blowing a terrific gale. An aching, irresistible weariness stole over the watcher. He drew his chair close to the bed and anxiously observed his charge. He examined her pulse; it was rising; her skin was hot and dry. She had passed from under the influence of the anaesthetic, and was now sleeping restlessly. He waited in dread for her awaking, for the unexpected situation in which the young man found himself was complex and difficult. It was essential that his patient should be as tranquil as possible. Knowledge of her father’s death might prove disastrous. Hence she must be deceived, and yet deception was unspeakably repugnant to the young man’s nature. But now it was a duty, which above all things must be done. She must be buoyed with hope. All her fortitude would be needed to bear the miserable conditions of her imprisonment. Meantime, the young man would post notices along the road, calling for help from the first persons passing.