An interval of helpless semi-consciousness ensued. He felt himself lifted by strong arms and carried forward, his arm hanging uselessly at his side. The dank odor of the wood was presently exchanged for the free 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The pressure continued, strange and potent even through his pain, and was then withdrawn.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.”
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 coverlet on a pillow before him. Cloths that had been wrung out in iced water were replaced upon it from time to time by Sophy, Miss Dows' housekeeper, who, seated near his bedhead, was lazily fanning him. Their eyes met.
“Broken?” he said interrogatively, with a faint return of his old deliberate manner, glancing at his helpless arm.
“Deedy no, cunnle! Snake bite,” responded the negress.
“Snake bite!” repeated Courtland with languid interest, “what snake?”
“Moccasin o' copperhead--if you doun know yo'se'f which,” she replied. “But it's all right now, honey! De pizen's draw'd out and clean gone. Wot yer feels now is de whiskey. De whiskey STAYS, sah. It gets into de lubrications of de skin, sah, and has to be abso'bed.”