Still he did not speak.  He looked down at the slit in the cloth and raised his hand towards it, but his arm fell limply and he swayed from side to side.

“Are you hurt?” asked Mrs. Floyd, anxiously.

“I think not,” he said; “but maybe I am, a little.”

Harriet opened his coat and screamed, “Oh, mother, he’s cut!  Look at the blood!”

He tried to button his coat, but could not use his fingers.  “Only a scratch,” he said.

“But your clothes are wet with blood,” Harriet insisted, as she pointed to his trousers.

He stooped and felt them.  They were damp and heavy.  Then he raised his heel in his right boot, and let it down again.

“It’s full,” he said, with a sickly smile.  “I reckon I have lost some blood.  Why—­why, I didn’t feel it.”

Martin Worthy, the storekeeper, ran across from the jail ahead of the others.  Hearing Westerfelt’s remark, he cried: 

“My Lord! you must go inside an’ lie down; fix a place, Miss Harriet, an’ send fer a doctor, quick!”

Harriet ran into the house, and Mrs. Floyd and Worthy supported Westerfelt between them into a room adjoining the parlor.  They made him lie on a bed, and Worthy opened his waistcoat and shirt.

“Good gracious, it’s runnin’ like a wet-weather spring,” he said.  “Have you sent fer a doctor?” he asked as Harriet came in.

“Yes; Dr. Lash, but he may not be at his office.”

“Send for Dr. Wells,” he ordered a man at the door.  “That’s right,” he added to Harriet, who had knelt by the bed and was holding the lips of the wound together, “keep the cut closed as well as you kin!  I’ll go tell ’im to use my hoss.”

As he went out there was a clatter of feet on the veranda.  The people were returning from the jail.  Westerfelt opened his eyes and looked towards the door.

“They’ll crowd in here,” said Harriet to her mother.  “Shut the door; don’t let anybody in except Mr. Bradley.”

Mrs. Floyd closed the door in the face of the crowd, asking them to go outside, but they remained in the hall, silent and awed, waiting for news of the wounded man.  Mrs. Floyd admitted Luke Bradley.

“My heavens, John, I had no idea he got such a clean sweep at you!” he said, as he approached the bed.  “Ef I’d a-knowed this I’d ‘a’ killed the dirty scamp!”

“I’m all right,” replied Westerfelt; “just a little loss of blood.”  But his voice was faint and his eyelids drooped despite his effort to keep them open.  Worthy rapped at the door and was admitted.

“Doc Lash has rid out to Widow Treadwell’s,” he announced.  “He’s been sent fer, an’ ort ter git heer before long.  It’ll take a hour to git Wells, even ef he’s at home.”

Harriet Floyd glanced at her mother when she heard this.  Her knees ached and her fingers felt stiff and numb, but she dared not stir.

Once Westerfelt opened his eyes and looked down at her.