They came to the house where John Edstrom was staying. The labouring man's wife opened the door. In answer to Hal's question, she said, “The old gentleman's pretty bad.” “What's the matter with him?”
“Didn't you know he was hurt?”
“No. How?”
“They beat him up, sir. Broke his arm, and nearly broke his head.”
Hal and Mary exclaimed in chorus, “Who did it? When?”
“We don't know who did it. It was four nights ago.”
Hal realised it must have happened while he was escaping from MacKellar's. “Have you had a doctor for him?”
“Yes, sir; but we can't do much, because my man is out of work, and I have the children and the boarders to look after.”
Hal and Mary ran upstairs. Their old friend lay in darkness, but he recognised their voices and greeted them with a feeble cry. The woman brought a lamp, and they saw him lying on his back, his head done up in bandages, and one arm bound in splints. He looked really desperately bad, his kindly old eyes deep-sunken and haggard, and his face—Hal remembered what Jeff Cotton had called him, “that dough-faced old preacher!”
They got the story of what had happened at the time of Hal's flight to Percy's train. Edstrom had shouted a warning to the fugitives, and set out to run after them; when one of the mine-guards, running past him, had fetched him a blow over the eye, knocking him down. He had struck his head upon the pavement, and lain there unconscious for many hours. When finally some one had come upon him, and summoned a policeman, they had gone through his pockets, and found the address of this place where he was staying written on a scrap of paper. That was all there was to the story—except that Edstrom had refrained from sending to MacKellar for help, because he had felt sure they were all working to get the mine open, and he did not feel he had the right to put his troubles upon them.
Hal listened to the old man's feeble statements, and there came back to him a surge of that fury which his North Valley experience had generated in him. It was foolish, perhaps; for to knock down an old man who had been making trouble was a comparatively slight exercise of the functions of a mine-guard. But to Hal it seemed the mo............