leg; I'm sure the cold
must be good for it;' and, with the axe for their only shovel, the two
girls gathered a pile of frozen snow, as a cushion and covering to the
limb--'Oh, if Edith were here! if Edith were here!' being Jay's
suppressed cry.

'Where is the labourer whom I saw working on the farm?'

'Gone away; discharged last week. Papa said he couldn't afford to pay
him any longer. That's why Reginald went out to chop to-day. Oh, Linda,
I wish somebody came. He is lying so white and still: are you sure he is
not dead?'

His head was on the little sister's lap, and Linda chafed the temples
with snow. Would the sleigh-bells ever be heard? She longed for help of
some sort. As to surgery, there was not a practitioner within thirty
miles. What could be done with such a bad hurt as this without a
surgeon?

A universal slight shudder, and a tremor of the eyelids, showed that
consciousness was returning to the wounded man. Almost at the same
instant Ponto raised his head, and ran off through the trees, whining. A
man's footsteps were presently heard coming rapidly over the crisp snow.
It was Mr. Holt: and a mountain load of responsibility and dread was
lifted from Linda's mind at the sight of him. This was not the first
time that she had felt in his presence the soothing sense of confidence
and restfulness.

He could not help praising them a little for what they had done with
the primitive tourniquet and the styptic agency of the snow. Beyond
tightening the bandage by an additional twist or two of the inserted
stick, he could do nothing more for the patient till he was removed to
the house; but he began collateral help by cutting poles for a litter,
and sent Jay and Linda for straps of basswood bark to fasten them
together. When the sleigh at last came up the avenue, Mr. Wynn the elder
helped him to carry young Armytage home, wherein Sam Holt's great
physical strength carefully bore two-thirds of the dead weight.

It seemed that he had been chopping up that fir for firewood, perhaps
without giving much thought to his work, when the axe, newly sharpened
before he came out, caught in a crooked branch, which diverted almost
the whole force of the blow on his own foot. Well was it that Mr. Holt,
in his erratic education, had chosen to pry into the mysteries of
surgery for one session, and knew something of the art of putting
together severed flesh and bone; although many a dreadful axe wound is
cured in the backwoods b