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Page 102
Days back self-confidence had come to him in Hannah's kitchen and Adam
Craig, in the course of time, had crushed it out with a keen and
understanding leer. Later it had returned with Adam's death, and the
weary voice of Doctor Cole had shattered it.
So now on a March night of wind and hail--and this time by telephone
after much tedious trouble with the wire, Doctor Cole's voice, tired,
sorrowful and kind, came stabbing intrusively into his full-blown
equanimity with a message of terror.
"Mr. O'Neill--"
"Yes."
"This is Doctor Cole of Briston, Pennsylvania."
Kenny stiffened. He had never quite forgiven the doctor for that
bleak, anticlimacteric morning when he had driven dazedly away with
Nellie. Adjectives, like a man's laughter, were to him an irrefutable
test. With one you could definitely prefigure a man's degree of
refinement; with the other the aesthetic color of his soul. And gray
was no color for any mortal's soul.
"Yes?"
"Mr. O'Neill," came the kind, tired voice, "I'm sorry, sorrier than I
can tell. I've bad news for you. There has been an accident, a quarry
explosion, and your son is badly injured."
A hot quiver swept through Kenny's body, ended at his face in a
stinging rush of blood and left him icy cold.
"Brian!"
"Yes. . . . Are you there, Mr. O'Neill?"
"Yes. . . . Yes, I am here. Doctor. . . . How--badly?"
"He is--well, conscious. I can hardly say more," owned the doctor.
"Thank God he's young and strong. There are no developed symptoms of
fracture yet but his skull--"
"Fracture! Skull!"
"There's a chance. Contusion now merely and a swollen condition. The
soft parts are unbroken and that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult,
but I must warn you that there is an immediate risk to his life from
shock and perhaps compression--"
"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, his eyes wet.
"You see, Mr. O'Neill," said the doctor sadly, "there may be depressed
fragments of bone or effused blood. We are watching closely. But I
think you had better come to him at once. There is a possibility--"
But there were some things that even the little doctor could not say.
"Still there, Mr. O'Neill?" he asked a little later.
"Yes. Where is Brian now?"
"In a quarry shack on what we call up here the Finlake mountain."
"Finlake mountain!"
"Yes, barely eighteen miles across the valley from the farm. They
couldn't find a doctor. Carson is nearer but he was out. Has a widely
scattered farm practice like my own and Don, frantic with terror,
telephoned to me. We've done everything possible for him, Mr. O'Neill,
but his pulse is pretty feeble and it's difficult to rouse him.
Sensibility of course is blunted. Bound to be--"
"I will be there," said Kenny, "as soon--as soon as it is possible.
There are but three north-bound trains at Briston?"
"Morning--eight-ten. Noon, one-twenty-nine and night, seven-fifteen.
But don't get off at Briston, Mr. O'Neill. Finlake, fifteen miles on,
is nearer--"
"I can not possibly make the morning train. The changes make the trip
long. Twelve hours. . . . God!"
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