Читать книгу Walda. A Novel онлайн

23 страница из 74

“The nearest chirurgeon is eight miles away,” replied Adolph Schneider. “Let the apothecary bleed Brother Kellar as soon as he is taken to his bed.”

Seeing that the man was emaciated and had no blood to lose, Everett stepped forward.

“I am a physician,” he said. “I will do what I can.”

He directed the crowd to fall back so that the sick man could have more air, and helped to carry the stretcher into an upper room of the school-house.

ssss1

In an upper room of the school-house Wilhelm Kellar lay upon a high-post bedstead that was screened by chintz curtains drawn back so that the air could reach him. His thin, wan face looked old and drawn as it rested on a feather pillow. He was comfortable, he let Everett know, when the physician went to visit him early in the morning after the seizure. His tongue refused to frame the words he tried to utter, but his eyes showed his gratitude. Everett took a seat in the heavy wooden chair at the foot of the bed, which stood in a little alcove. Beyond the alcove the main room stretched out beneath the roof, which gave it many queer corners. Rows of books partially hid one wall. In one corner a high chest of drawers held a pair of massive silver candlesticks. An old desk with a sloping top occupied a little nook lighted by a diamond window; here were quill-pens and bottles of colored ink. This upper room, occupied jointly by Wilhelm Kellar and Gerson Brandt, bore the impress of the school-master, who waited now, leaning on the back of an old wooden arm-chair polished with much use.