It had all happened so suddenly that Doris sat for a moment staring at the motionless figure. Then the color forsook her face, and she sprang up with a cry, and looked round for help. There was not a moving thing in sight excepting the horse, who had picked himself up and was calmly, not to say contemptuously, grazing a few yards off.
Doris, trembling a little, knelt down and bent over the young man. His eyes were closed, and his face was white, and there was a thin streak of red trickling down his forehead.
A spasm ran through her heart as she looked, for the sudden dread had flashed across her mind that—he was dead.
“Oh, what shall I do?” she cried, and she sprang to her feet, aroused by the impulse to run for assistance; but the white, still face seemed to utter a voiceless appeal to her not to leave him, and she hesitated. No!—she would not leave him.
She whipped out her handkerchief, and, running to the brook, dashed it into the water; then, kneeling down beside him, bathed his forehead, shuddering a little as she saw that the thin streak of red came again as fast as she washed it away.
Presently she fancied that she saw a faint tremor upon the pale lips, and in her eagerness and anxiety she sank down upon the grass and drew his head upon her knee, and with faltering hands unfastened his collar. She did it in pure ignorance, but it happened to be exactly the right thing to do, and after a moment or two the young fellow shivered slightly, and, to Doris’ unspeakable relief, opened his eyes. There was no sense in them for a spell, during which Doris noticed, in the way one notices trivial things in moments of deep anxiety, that they were handsome eyes, of a dark brown; and that the rest of the face was worthy of the eyes; and there flashed through her mind the half-formed thought that it would have been a pity for one so young and so good-looking to have died. Then a faint intelligence came into his upturned gaze, and he looked up into her great pitying eyes with a strange look of bewilderment which gradually grew into a wondering admiration that brought a dash of color to Doris’ face.
“Where am I?” he said at last, and the voice that had sung “The Maids of Merry England” sounded strangely thin and feeble; “am I—dead?”
It was a queer question. Did he think that it was an angel bending over him? A faint smile broke over Doris’ anxious face, and one sprang up to his to meet it.
“I remember,” he said, without taking his eyes from her face; “Poll pitched me over the hedge.”
He tried to laugh and raise his head, but the laugh died away with suspicious abruptness and his head sunk back.