"We agree with you perfectly, Miss Carter, and will say nothing at all in regard to the accident," the spinsters a.s.sured her, and they looked so kind and sensible that Helen's heart was warmed to them and she wondered that she had not noticed before what very intelligent, good faces both of them had.

"All right," said Dr. Wright, "it is perfectly ethical for a physician to keep his patient's malady to himself. Miss Helen Carter is suffering from an injury to her ankle. If the inquisitive choose to make of it a sprain it is their own affair. Now, Lewis, how shall we manage? It will be pretty awkward for us to make a basket of our hands going up this cliff," and with that he stooped and picked Helen up in his arms, and with no more exertion than if she had been Bobby, he made his way up the mountain.

"Would it hurt me to walk? I can't bear to be so much trouble."

"It is best to keep very quiet. I am pretty sure there is going to be no trouble, but I must have you behave just exactly as though there was."

"Lewis, you get Douglas off by herself and let her know what it was, but wait until we are back in camp. Tell her so she won't be scared, and let her know it is all right before you let her know what it is."

"I believe the rattlesnake is called crotalus horridus," said one of the wise ladies.

Dr. Wright wished she would stop talking about snakes and especially rattlers, as he wanted to get Helen's mind off the terrifying occurrence.

"We are not sure this was a rattlesnake," he said.

"I think it was," she whispered to him. "I remember as I jumped I heard something that sounded like dry leaves." Did the young man hold her closer to him or was it just a fancy on her part?

"It knocks me all up to think about it," he muttered. "I am glad, so glad I followed you."

"I am, too!"

A wave of crimson flooded the young man's face. He didn't know why, but his blood was singing in his veins and his breath came quickly. If it had not been for the presence of the respectable spinsters, he was sure he would have had to kiss that piquant face so close to his.

"Come on, Doc, my time now to take up the white man's burden. Helen is no featherweight and you are red in the face and panting from carrying her this far."

"Not a bit of it!" and Dr. Wright held on to his burden while Lewis endeavored to relieve him.

"Well, let's cut the baby in two, like my Aunt's favorite character in history."

"If I give up, it will be for the same reason the woman in the Bible did," laughed Dr. Wright. "You remember it was the woman who had the right who gave up?"

The spinsters were still talking about the habits and customs of the horridus crotalus.

"They know so much and keep piling on so much more, I fancy if they didn't give out some of their learning, they would bust," whispered Lewis, as he grasped his cousin in a bear hug and started to finish the journey to the temporary camp.

"Do you remember a limerick, I think Oliver Hereford's?" asked Helen:

"'There was once a h.o.m.o teetotalus Who stepped on a horridus crotalus, "Hic!" clavit in pain, "I've got 'em again!"

Ejacit this h.o.m.o teetotalus.'"

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE DIAGNOSIS.

There was a great outcry from the party when Helen appeared in the arms of Lewis with an ostentatious bandage on her ankle, so that the verdict of a sprain was established without the attending physician's having to perjure himself with a false diagnosis.

Helen was looking very pale and tired, and thankful indeed was she for the bony back of Josephus, that was destined to bear her home. She and Bobby both found room on the patient old mule, who started off with his usual bird-like spirit, seemingly proud of his fair burden.

"I am afraid we are too much for Josephus," Helen said to Josh.

"Naw'm! Josephus is proud to tote the likes of you allses. He is jes' a been tellin' we uns that he is thankful his short leg is up the mounting so Miss Helen will ride mo' easy like."

"Well, I'll give him some sugar when we get home," laughed Helen.

Dr. Wright kept close by the side of the mule wherever the trail permitted and once or twice held out his hand to feel the pulse of the patient. That is the danger of snake bite: that the pulse may become feeble. The old treatment of whisky, drunk in large quant.i.ties, is now thought to have been the cause of more deaths from snake bites than the bites themselves. Persons unaccustomed to liquor could not stand the large doses that were poured down them by well-meaning friends. The present day treatment is: strychnia to keep up the pulse and the thorough burning out of the wound, after it has been sucked by a healthy mouth.

A sprained ankle is nothing to dampen the spirits of youth and so the crowd went back as gaily as it came. Helen could not help thinking how differently they would have behaved had they known the true inwardness of her having to ride on the back of the mule that reminded her of nothing so much as a saw-horse. Had they understood that a rattlesnake had taken a nip out of her tendon Achilles, it would have put an end to their cheerfulness and also an end to their week-end boarders if she was not mistaken.

"Suppose it is going to do me as it did old Uncle Snake-bit Peter we used to see up at Wytheville," she said to herself, "with his leg all drawn up and shrivelled." She got giddy at the thought and then it was that Dr. Wright, who seemed to know exactly what was in her mind, put out his hand and felt her pulse and then gave her another tiny pellet.

He looked so good and so dependable and seemed so confident that all was going well with her, she felt she must perforce have faith in him.

"'I will look unto the hills from whence cometh my help,'" came to her lips, and she whispered the text softly.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," she blushed, "I was talking to myself."

"You were blowing down my neck," said Bobby, who was perched in front of her. "If you were whiskering to me, I didn't hear what you said.

'Tain't perlite to whisker in comp'ny, and, 'sides, I always tell my 'ployer what you say 'bout him, anyhow."

Helen was silent. Would she ever be able to live down all the unkind things she had said about Dr. Wright? How could he be so nice to her?

Of course, she understood that he had done what any physician would have done in treating the wound, although he might have called Lewis Somerville to do the extremely objectionable part of the process of cleaning the bite. Since Lewis was a cousin and in the mountains as protector to her and her sisters, it might have been up to him to render first aid, since the tendon Achilles is so situated that it would take a contortionist to administer treatment to oneself. If Dr. Wright had only done his duty as laid down in the code of medical ethics, he certainly had a wonderfully pleasing sick room manner and his patients must one and all give him praise for sympathy and understanding.

"Gwen done promised me'n Josh to have some gingerbread made by the time we gits back from hiking," broke in Bobby. "I is a-hopin' that all this joltin' is gonter shake down my lunch some, 'cause sho's you's born I don't want what I done et. If Josephus stumbles agin I reckon my stomick will growl an' then I'm most sho' I kin hole a leetle mo' if it's gingerbread. Gwen kin make the bes'es' an' sof'es' an' blackes'

gingerbread what I ever et."

At the mention of Gwen, Helen's thoughts went back to the Devil's Gorge where her father had met such a tragic end, and the wallet she had seen in the branches of the scrub oak tree flashed in her mind's eye.

"The wallet! The wallet! We forgot to get it out of the tree," she exclaimed.

"By Jove! So we did! Somehow, other things seemed more important."

"I wonder what it was. It might have been in the Englishman's pocket, and when he fell down the cliff, it might have got caught in the branches of the scrub oak. I wish I knew."

Camp looked very peaceful and homelike when the hikers returned. The card players were still at it and seemed all unconscious of the lengthening shadows. Mrs. Tate took occasion while she was dummy to embrace her offspring and to suggest that she put witchhazel on her sunburned countenance. The bachelor uncle played through his no trump hand before he could a.s.sure himself of his niece's safety. Miss Lizzie Somerville had felt no uneasiness about the crowd, because was not her beloved Lewis taking care of them? She was somewhat concerned when she learned that her favorite among the girls had sprained her ankle but thanked her stars that it was only a sprain and not a snake bite or something terrible.

"I have a dread of snakes," she said as she stood over Helen in the tent where Dr. Wright had tenderly borne her, and where she lay on her cot, thankful indeed to be off the sharp back of Josephus and at rest on what was not exactly a luxurious bed but very comfortable to her tired bones.

"It was a blessing that Dr. Wright was with you and could bind up your ankle so nicely. Does it pain you much, child?"

"No'm, not much! Not at all right now."

"Well, as I said before, I am thankful it was not a snake bite as I was sure none of you had carried whisky with you, and that is the only thing to use when a snake bites you, so I have always been told. No matter what your habits or convictions are, you must drink whisky if a snake bites you. Am I not right, doctor?"

"Well, whisky is better than nothing, but there are things that are better than whisky," smiled the young man, wishing that Miss Somerville would get away from the painful subject and realizing more than ever how wise Helen had been to conceal the real cause of her being out of the running. "Strychnia is the treatment of modern science, as it is more efficacious than whisky to keep up the pulse." He felt Helen's pulse while he was talking, which seemed to Miss Somerville rather unnecessary concern for a sprained ankle, and she went off murmuring to herself: "'There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea four, which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.'"