he could scarce see. When he fumblingly raised his hand, he discovered that his right eye was a pulp of blind flesh, and along his jaw he could feel the exposed bone.
He staggered along the path through the cornfield, stumbling over hummocks, lying there sobbing, muttering, "Bess—oh, come—Bess!"
His strength lasted him just to the highroad, and he sloped to earth, lay by the road like a drunken beggar. A motor was coming, but when the driver saw Frank's feebly uplifted arm he sped on. Pretending to be hurt was a device of hold-up men.
"Oh, God, won't anybody help me?" Frank whimpered, and suddenly he was laughing, a choking twisted laughter. "Yes, I said it, Philip—'God' I said—I suppose it proves I'm a good Christian!"
He rocked and crawled along the road to a cottage. There was a light—a farmer at early breakfast. "At last!" Frank wept. When the farmer answered the knock, holding up a lamp, he looked once at Frank, then screamed and slammed the door.
An hour later a motorcycle policeman found Frank in the ditch, in half delirium.
"Another drunk!" said the policeman, most cheerfully, snapping the support in place on his cycle. But as he stooped and saw Frank's half-hidden face, he whispered, "Good God Almighty!"
The doctors told him that though the right eye was gone completely, he might not entirely lose the sight of the other for perhaps a year.
Bess did not shriek when she saw him; she only stood with her hands shaky at her breast.
She seemed to hesitate before kissing what had been his mouth. But she spoke cheerfully:
"Don't you worry about a single thing. I'll get a job that'll keep us going. I've already seen the general secretary at the C. O. S. And isn't it nice that the kiddies are old enough now to read aloud to you."
To be read aloud to, the rest of his life . . .
