CHAPTER I.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 418, 9 November 1889, Page 3

CHAPTER I.

Thj: school recess was hardly finished, and the boys were yet panting from their last runs, when a knock summoned the teacher to the door. In a moment he called Will Mallory to him as he stood there. 1 Mallory, your father has been hurt at the mill. You are to go homo at once, but you are to stop for the doctor as you go. This man is from the mill.' As Will Mallory followed the man down the stairs, fairly leaping as he went, and as they ran down Linden-sh-eet together, the man explained that in stepping barkwards -at the sawmill Mr Mallory hail tripped ; he had thrown out his hand involuntarily to catch his balance, and had cut his arm badly in one of the circular saws. ' One of them little ones that trim 3 the laths at the ends, j t ou know.' Bub Will was not very curious as to which saw had been guilty. Once at the end of Linden-street he ran through his uncle's garden, he swung himself by his arms to the top of a ten-foot board fence whioh bounded that garden and then dropped on the other side. Then he crossed the Amos pasture at a 4.20 pace, took the picket behind Dr. Morton's garden with a flying leap, and so came to the Doctor's office door. Celina, the black woman, saw him as he passed the kitchen window, and the door opened almost as soon as he could have wished. ' Doctor in ?' • No, he is jest gone -gone to Elder Perkins, and then to the cross roads— you i= jest too late.' But, before these words were well spoken, the boy was gone. From the Doctor's gate he took up, on the sidewalk, the steady pace which had been well trained in Hare and Hounds. At the first corner he saw the chaise not two hundred yards before him. Then with a spurt, to which the Doctor's calico horse was by no means equal, he overhauled the team in a very few seconds — and still had wind enough to tell his story when he had stopped the Doctor. The Doctor bade him spring into the carriage, wh'ieh he did with a certain doubt, being quite certain that he should make the time better alone. But, to do the o'd calico justice, he also rose to the emergency— and in a very few minutes, they were at the door of Will Mallory? house. His mother was standing there, pale but able to speak cheerfully to him. In a moment more — with his hand roughly bound — but bleeding so that his clothes were covered with blood, Mr Mallory appeared in the carriage which had been 'found for him at the mill. Ho w.ts holding his arm up, and resting it on the pcrpon- | dieular stay of the waggon top. But Will i could see "that with every stroke of his heart a fresh gout of blood was forced out - from the rough bandage. Es r eryb6dy was in time. 'If the thinsr must happen,' said Dr. Horton to his wife at dinner, * it happened as well as it could. That sensible Jane Mallory had her head on her shoulders. In tive minutes' notice she had her basins and.Jb'er. bandages, and her water and ice all ready,! \ Jove ! I did not ask for a thing fyiaft \?M - nofc there. Will, he was as cool as" if he had been in the army, and had 3een a thousand men bleeding to death. He held hju father's arm while I was stitching and twining, nevei said a word, and yet he &aw die' whole, and he could do that thing to-morrow as well as I can. Mallory was quiet— made no"fusswell, you would know Mallory would not ; he's got to be lad up for a month before he can do much with that hand.' 'Peas — yest, but no beets.' Then after a pause, 'Bub, Martha, if I had been there ten minutes later, there would have been no Mallory now.'