His teeth were chattering, but it was not with fright now; he had forgotten that he had once fancied this to have been a ghost.
It was a girl, and it lay motionless.
He stripped off the shoddy black jacket and wrung the water from it, then tried to wring it from the poor, clinging cotton skirts, that were stiffening with frost in the biting air; after that he chafed the cold body, and took off the worn boots and emptied the water out of them; and then he searched in his pockets, and drew forth a half-pint flat bottle, which he put to her lips.
A pungent odour of common spirit filled the air.
“It’s lucky I left a drop,” he murmured to himself, and a keener satisfaction than he had ever experienced even from drinking it himself filled him as he watched the colour slowly come back to the ashen face. But it took a deal of rubbing again before the eyes opened, before any breath seemed to come struggling through those pale lips. Several times he was for leaving her and running for assistance, because he was frightened.
But the village was far behind, and he was afraid she might die while he was gone; so he waited with a beating heart, and at last she moved and tried to speak.
“D’ye feel better now?” said he.
She nodded feebly.
He passed his hand under her head and set her up against his knee.
But the head drooped again, and she began to shiver.