in
the dark for the twisted foot.

"Oh!" Eloise cried, sitting upright, as a sharp pain shot from her ankle
to her head. "Don't touch me. I can't bear it. I am afraid it is broken.
What has happened, and where is the carriage?"

"Home by this time, if Brutus and Cassius have not demolished it in
their mad fright," Howard said, explaining that at the last heavy peal
of thunder the horses had swerved from the road and upset the carriage
at the entrance to the park; that Sam had been thrown to some distance
from the box, but had gathered himself up, and gone after the horses
tearing up the avenue. "I shouted to him to come back with a lantern as
quickly as possible. He'll be here soon, I think. Are you in great
pain?"

"When I move, yes," Eloise replied, and then, as the full extent of the
catastrophe burst upon her, she began to cry,--not softly to herself,
but hysterically, with sobs which smote both Howard and Jack like blows.

It was a novel predicament in which they found themselves,--near
midnight, in a thunderstorm, with a young girl on the ground unable to
walk, and neither of them knowing what to do. Howard said it was a
deuced shame, and Jack told her not to cry. Sam was sure to come with a
lantern soon, and they'd see what was the matter. As he talked he put
her head back upon his shoulder, and she let it lie there without
protest.

After what seemed a long time, Sam came up with a lantern. The carriage
was badly injured, he said, having been dragged through the avenue on
its side. Brutus had a gouge on his shoulder from running into a tall
shrub; he had hurt his arm when he fell from the box, and the Colonel
was not in a very pious state of mind on account of his damaged
property.

Eloise heard it all, but did not realize its import, her foot was
paining her so badly. Jack had helped her up when Sam came, but she
could not walk, and her face looked so white when the lantern light fell
upon it, that both men feared she was going to faint.

"What shall we do?" Howard asked, standing first on one foot and then on
the other, and feeling the water ooze over the tops of his shoes.

"Take her to the Crompton house, of course. It must be nearer than Mrs.
Biggs's," Jack suggested.

Before Howard could reply, Eloise exclaimed, "Oh, no, I can hop on one
foot to Mrs. Biggs's if some one helps me. Is it far?"

The two men looked inquiringly at each other and then at Sam, who was
the first to speak. In the Colo