slipped, or was it his blindness of rage? He caught at the vines with
frantic hands, but as if they laughed at him they slipped from his
grasp. His feet clattered against the step trying for footing, but he
was too near the edge, and he went down straight into a little rocky
nook where ferns and violets were growing, and a sharp jagged rock
stuck up and bit him viciously as he slid and struggled for a firm
footing again. Then an ugly twist of his ankle, and he lay in a
humiliating heap in the shadow of the vines on the lawn, crying out and
beginning to curse with the pain that gripped him in sharp teeth, and
stung through his whole excitable inflamed being.

The minister was there almost at once, bending over him. Somehow he
felt as if he were in the power of somebody greater than he had ever
met before. It was almost like meeting God out on the road somewhere.
The minister stooped and picked him up, lightly, as if he had been a
feather, and carried him like a baby, thrown partly over his shoulder;
up the steps, and into that blasted house again. Into the bright light
that sickened him and made the pain leap up and bring a mighty
faintness.

He laid him almost tenderly upon a soft couch, and straightened the
pillows about him, seeming to know just how every bone felt, and how
every nerve quivered, and then he asked a few questions in a quiet
voice. "What happened? Was it your ankle? Here? Or _here?_ All
right. Just be patient a minute, I'll have you all fixed up. This was
my job over in France you know. No, don't move. It won't hurt long. It
was right here you said. Now, wait till I get my bottle of lotion."

He was back in an instant with bandages, and bottle, and seemed to know
just how to get off a shoe with the least trouble.