"Celia--Celia--are you hurt?" cried Charlotte, and dashed down the
stairs.

There was no answer. With trembling hands she felt for her sister's
head. It lay close against the cellar wall, and she instantly understood
that Celia must be unconscious. But whether there might be more to be
feared than unconsciousness she could not tell in the dark. Her first
thought was to get a light, the next that she must have help at once.

She rushed up the stairs, calling Jeff and Justin, but neither boy was
to be found. Then she ran to the telephone, with the idea of summoning
one of the suburban physicians, but turned aside from this purpose with
the further realisation that first of all Celia must be brought up from
the cold, dark place in which she lay, and restored to consciousness.

She ran to the front door to summon the nearest neighbour, and she
remembered then, with relief, that the nearest neighbour was Doctor
Churchill, the young physician who had been called in to see her mother
the evening before.

She flew across the narrow lawn between her own house and that where the
new doctor had set up his office, and rang imperatively. The door
opened, and Doctor Churchill, hat and case in hand, evidently on his way
to a patient, stood before her.

What he thought of the figure before him, with its riotous curly black
hair, brilliant eyes, pale dark cheeks, dusty pinafore, a singular
smudge upon the forehead, and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, nobody
would have known from his manner, which instantly expressed a friendly
concern.