Adoption By Blood

Near the wood pile stood the old mountaineer, on his countenance
expression of mingled pain and chagrin, the latter dominating. His right
hand still grasped the keen-edged axe, while Rose stood beside him,
clasping his brawny left forearm with both of her small but sinewy
hands.

As Donald approached them on the run he noticed that the girl had
sacrificed her treasured hair ribbon to make a tourniquet halfway up the
old man's arm, and that blood was running down his hand and falling from
the finger tips with slow, rhythmical continuity.

"Hit haint nothin' et all, Smiles," Big Jerry was rumbling forth. "Hit
air jest er scratch. I don't know how I come fer ter do hit an' I reckon
I ought ter be plumb ershamed. Why, Smiles, I been erchoppin' wood fer
nigh onter fifty year, an' I haint never chopped myself erfore. Hit war
thet tarnation knot. But hit haint nothin', this hyar haint."

"Come over to the well where we can give it a wash," was Donald's curt
command, and Big Jerry followed him obediently, while the girl hastened
ahead and drew up a bucket full of pure, sparkling, ice-cold spring
water. The doctor tipped it unceremoniously over the giant's arm, and,
as the already coagulating blood on the surface was washed away, made a
hasty examination of the slanting, ugly gash beneath.

"Superficial wound. No artery or major muscle severed," he announced, as
though addressing a class. "Still, you were right in taking the
precaution of applying that tourniquet, Rose. I suppose it was bleeding
pretty merrily at first."