"What's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"
Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know,--fell on it when his horse
came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his
clothes.
"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel."
By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was
a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people
like a hawk with a broken wing.
When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.
"Isn't it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there's
females and children standin' near."
This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from
the front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat
hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a
neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of
hair looked like a last-year's crow's-nest.
But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon's considerate
remonstrance.
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