As I pa.s.sed out I heard a faint voice call, "Mother!"

Going to the door of Adah's room I saw that she was conscious, and feebly trying to rise. As I entered she looked at me in utter bewilderment, then shrank with instinctive fear from the presence of a seeming intruder. I saw the impulse of her half-conscious mind, and called Miss Warren, who came at once, and her presence seemed rea.s.suring.

"What's the matter?" she asked, with the same thick utterance that I had noted in Mr. Yocomb's voice. It seemed as if the organs of speech were partially paralyzed.

"You have been ill, my dear, but now you are much better. The doctor will be here soon," Miss Warren said soothingly.

She seemed to comprehend the words imperfectly, and turned her wondering eyes toward me.

"Oh, that the doctor would come!" I groaned. "Here you have two on your hands, and Mr. Yocomb is calling."

"Who's that?" asked Adah, feebly pointing to me.

"You remember Mr. Morton," Miss Warren said quietly, bathing the girl's face with cologne. "You brought him home from meeting this morning."

The girl's gaze was so fixed and peculiar that it held me a moment, and gave the odd impression of the strong curiosity of one waking up in a new world. Suddenly she closed her eyes and fell back faint and sick.

At that moment, above the sound of the rain, I heard the quick splash of a horse's feet, and hastened down to greet the doctor.

In a few hasty words I added such explanation of the catastrophe as Reuben's partial account rendered necessary, and by the time I had finished we were at Mrs. Yocomb's door. Mr. Yocomb seemed sufficiently at rest to be left for a while.

"This is Miss Warren," I said. "She will be your invaluable a.s.sistant, but you must be careful of her, since she, too, has suffered very severely, and, I fear, is keeping up on the strength of her brave will, mainly."

The physician, fortunately, was a good one, and his manner gave us confidence from the start.

"I think I understand the affair sufficiently," he said; "and the best thing you can do for my patients, and for Miss Warren also, Mr. Morton, is to have some strong black coffee made as soon as possible. That will now prove an invaluable remedy, I think."

"I'll show you where the coffee is," Miss Warren added promptly.

"Unfortunately--perhaps fortunately--Mrs. Yocomb let the woman who a.s.sisted her go away for the night. Had she been here she might have been another burden."

Even though I had but a moment or two in the room, I saw that the doctor was anxious about little Zillah.

As Miss Warren waited on me I said earnestly, "What a G.o.dsend you are!"

"No," she replied with a tone and glance that, to me, were sweeter and more welcome than all the June sunshine of that day. "I was here, and you were sent." Then her eyes grew full of dread, reminding me of the gaze she had bent on the storm before which she had cowered. "The house was on fire," she said; "we were all helpless--unconscious. You saved us. I begin to realize it all."

"Come, Miss Warren, you now are 'seeing double.' Here, Reuben," I said to the young fellow, who came dripping in from the barn. "I want to introduce you in a new light. Miss Warren doesn't half know you yet, and I wish her to realize that you are no longer a boy, but a brave, level-headed man, that even when stunned by lightning could do as much as I did."

"Now, Richard Morton, I didn't do half as much as thee did. How's mother?" and he spoke with a boy's ingenuousness.

"Doing well under the care of the doctor you brought," I said; "and if you will now help me make this dying fire burn up quickly, she will have you to thank more than any one else when well again."

"I'm going to thank you now," Miss Warren exclaimed, seizing both of his hands. "G.o.d bless you, Reuben! You don't realize what you have done for us all."

The young fellow looked surprised. "I only did what Richard Morton told me," he protested, "and that wasn't much."

"Well, there's a pair of you," she laughed. "The fire put itself out, and Dapple went after the doctor." Then, as if overwhelmed with grat.i.tude, she clasped her hands and looked upward, as she said, in low, thrilling tones: "Thank G.o.d, oh thank G.o.d! what a tragedy we have escaped!"

"Yes," I said, "it might have been a day of fate indeed. Life would have been an unendurable burden if what you feared had happened. What's more, I would have lost my faith in G.o.d had such a home and its inmates been destroyed. The thought of it makes me sick," and I sank into a chair.

"We must not think of it," she cried earnestly, "for there's much to be done still. There, I've helped you all I can here. When the coffee's ready, call me, and I'll come for it. Get on dry clothes as soon as you can, Reuben, for you can be of great service to us upstairs. I'm astonished at you, Mr. Morton, you haven't any nerve at all--you who have dealt in conflagrations, murders, wars, pestilences, earthquakes, writing them up in the most harrowing, blood-curdling style; you have absolutely turned white and faint because the inmates of a farmhouse were shocked. I won't believe you are an editor at all unless you call me within five minutes."

Whether because her piquant words formed just the spur I needed, or because she had a mysterious power over me which made her will mine, I threw off the depression into which I had reacted from my overwhelming excitement and anxiety, and soon had my slowly kindling fire burning furiously, dimly conscious in the meantime that deep in my heart another and subtler flame was kindling also.

CHAPTER XIV

KINDLING A SPARK OF LIFE

I soon had coffee made that was as black as the night without. Instead of calling Miss Warren, I took a tray from the dining-room, and carried it with several cups upstairs.

"Bring it here!" called the doctor.

I entered Mrs. Yocomb's room, and found that she had quite fully revived, and that Reuben had supported his father thither also. He reclined on the lounge, and his usually ruddy face was very pale. Both he and his wife appeared almost helpless; but the doctor had succeeded in arresting, by the use of ice, the distressing nausea that had followed consciousness. They looked at me in a bewildered manner as I entered, and could not seem to account for my presence at once. Nor did they, apparently, try to do so long, for their eyes turned toward little Zillah with a deeply troubled and perplexed expression, as if they were beginning to realize that the child was very ill, and that events of an extraordinary character had happened.

"Let me taste the coffee," said the doctor. "Ah! that's the kind--black and strong. See how it will bring them around," and he made Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb each swallow a cup of it.

"Miss Warren," he called, "give some of this to Miss Adah, if she is quiet enough to take it. I cannot leave the child."

Miss Warren came at once. Her face was clouded and anxious, and she looked with eager solicitude toward the still unconscious Zillah, whose hands Reuben was chafing.

"I think Miss Adah will soon be better," she replied to the doctor's inquiring glance, and she went back to her charge.

"Take some yourself," said the physician to me, in a low tone. "I fear we are going to have a serious time with the little girl."

"You do not realize," I urged, "that Miss Warren needs keeping up almost as truly as any of them."

"You'll have to take care of her then," said the doctor hastily; "she seems to be doing well herself, and doing well for others. Take her some coffee, and say that I said she must drink it."

I knocked at Adah's door and called, "Miss Warren, the doctor says you must drink this coffee."

"In a few moments," she answered, and after a little time she came out.

"Where's your cup?" she asked. "Have you taken any?"

"Not yet, of course."

"Why of course? If you want me to drink this you must get some at once."

"There may not be enough. I don't know how much the doctor may need."

"Then get a cup, and I'll give you half of this."

"Never," I answered promptly. "Do as the doctor bade you."

She went swiftly to Mrs. Yocomb's room and filled another cup.