air of the open field; the flaming pine-knot torches were extinguished
in the bright moonlight. People pressed around him, but so indistinctly
he could not recognize them. All his consciousness seemed centred in
the burning, throbbing pain of his arm. He felt himself laid upon the
gravel; the sleeve cut from his shoulder, the cool sensation of the hot
and bursting skin bared to the night air, and then a soft, cool, and
indescribable pressure upon a wound he had not felt before. A voice
followed,--high, lazily petulant, and familiar to him, and yet one he
strove in vain to recall.

"De Lawdy-Gawd save us, Miss Sally! Wot yo' doin' dah? Chile! Chile! Yo'
'll kill yo'se'f, shuah!"

The pressure continued, strange and potent even through his pain, and
was then withdrawn. And a voice that thrilled him said:--

"It's the only thing to save him! Hush, ye chattering black crow! Say
anything about this to a living soul, and I'll have yo' flogged! Now
trot out the whiskey bottle and pour it down him."


CHAPTER VII.


When Courtland's eyes opened again, he was in bed in his own room at
Redlands, with the vivid morning sun occasionally lighting up the wall
whenever the closely drawn curtains were lightly blown aside by the
freshening breeze. The whole events of the night might have been a
dream but for the insupportable languor which numbed his senses, and
the torpor of his arm, that, swollen and discolored, lay outside the