reached the farm-yard gate, and he shouted, with a tremendous voice, to
his mother to come and open it. Fortunately she was in sight, and came
toward us quickly.

He carried me into the house, and laid me down on the _lit de
fouaille_--a wooden frame forming a sort of couch, and filled with dried
fern, which forms the principal piece of furniture in every farm-house
kitchen in the Channel Islands. Then he cut away the boot from my
swollen ankle, with a steady but careful touch, speaking now and then a
word of encouragement, as if I were a child whom he was tending. His
mother stood by, looking on helplessly and in bewilderment, for he had
not had time to explain my accident to her.

But for my arm, which hung helplessly at my side, and gave me
excruciating pain when he touched it, it was quite evident he could do
nothing.

"Is there nobody who could set it?" I asked, striving very hard to keep
calm.

"We have no doctor in Sark now," he answered. "There is no one but
Mother Renouf. I will fetch her."

But when she came she declared herself unable to set a broken limb. They
all three held a consultation over it in their own dialect; but I saw by
the solemn shaking of their heads, and Tardif's troubled expression,
that it was entirely beyond her skill to set it right. She would
undertake my sprained ankle, for she was famous for the cure of sprains
and bruises, but my arm was past her? The pain I was enduring bathed my
face with perspiration, but very little could be done to alleviate it.