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She ought to be glad you’re willing to look after her. I’ll bring what I have on hand, but I’ll want a prescription filled later. Have you anybody to send to Avebury?”
    â€œMr. and Mrs. Hunter are coming.”
    â€œGood; Hunter will drive in for me. I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.”
    Clara went back to the bedroom. Miss Radford lay under a blanket, her eyes open, and her face set in an expression of grim endurance.
    â€œIt’s all right, Miss Radford,” said Clara. “Doctor Knapp is on the way.”
    Miss Radford’s voice was the stronger of the two: “I don’t know what got into me to let such a thing happen; I don’t know what got into Billy,” she said. “I don’t mean to stay here and impose on you. Knapp will have to get me home.”
    â€œWe’ll take good care of you till they can send an ambulance.”
    â€œI can’t be sick in somebody else’s house. Knapp will have to get me home tonight.”
    â€œIt’s your own cottage.” Clara met the pale-blue eyes; in them she read amazement, and the determination to conceal it as far as it could be concealed by mortal effort. “Don’t worry, Miss Radford,” she went on. “We won’t leave you a minute. You’ll be right with us, and the Hunters are coming.”
    â€œWhere’s Billy?”
    â€œOut in the yard, mowing the grass. I’m going out to water him and cover him up till your man gets here.”
    Miss Radford closed her eyes. Clara waited until Maggie came back into the room, and then got a piece of clothesline and a bucket of water. She went out, tied the gray to a tree, got his harness off, and gave him a drink. Then she went up to get a rug from the second-floor sitting room. The attic door was wide open, but she did not even wait to close it; it was only another horror among horrors, and her bewildered mind refused to deal with it.
    She took the rug from the sofa, and went down and into the yard. As she covered the old horse, straightening the blanket with precision, the Hunters drove up in their open car. They looked very festive, and it was rather funny to see their faces change as they caught sight of the fallen buggy, the broken shaft, and the heap of ferns and flowers.
    â€œYe heavenly powers,” said Hunter, transfixed, “what’s this?”
    â€œThere’s been an accident,” shrieked Fanny. “Clara, is that Miss Radford’s rig? What’s happened to Miss Radford?”
    â€œShe’s hurt her foot,” said Clara. “The doctor’s coming. I’m so sorry about dinner.”
    â€œDinner!” Phineas Hunter helped his wife out of the car, and then came up to Clara and took hold of her arm above the elbow. “You need a doctor yourself. You look very green, Clara; where’s your whiskey?”

CHAPTER FIVE
Twenty Minutes to One
    T HE HUNTERS WERE magnificent. They refused to be guests, they took entire charge of the cottage, they would not even consider going home that night. Fanny sat with Miss Radford—who, after one startled look at her radiant nurse’s flowered dinner dress and multicolored earrings, shut her eyes and remained in a kind of obstinate trance—while Maggie rescued the dinner from the stove and set a table in the sitting room upstairs. That was Hunter’s idea, and he helped place and lay it. Clara, passing through, saw that the attic door had been closed. He detained her.
    â€œCome and sit down a minute, Clara, until Knapp gets here, and tell me how the thing happened.”
    Clara felt much better; the arrival of the Hunters had changed the whole aspect of things. She had had a stiff drink of whiskey, and Miss Radford’s condition pushed less material anxieties into the background. She found herself able to talk without difficulty, and she was glad to sit down beside Hunter and tell him part of the tale:
    â€œIt was that