"Madge, Madge, keep up a little longer."
The road had left the car-track, the noise of the train was dying away in the distance. At last, turning a curve, he saw that Madge's horse had come down to a canter, and that she was pulling feebly at the rein.
As he approached he shouted "Whoa!" with such a voice of command that the horse stopped suddenly and she almost fell forward.
"Quick, Graydon, quick!" she gasped.
He sprang to the ground, and a second later she was an unconscious burden in his arms.
He laid her gently on a mossy bank under an oak; then, with a face fairly livid with passion, he drew a small revolver from his hip-pocket, stepped back to the horse that now stood trembling and exhausted in the road, and shot him dead.
He now saw that they had been observed at a neighboring farmhouse, and that people were running toward them. Gathering Madge again in his arms, he bore her toward the dwelling, in which effort he was soon aided by a stout countryman.
The farmer's wife was all solicitude, and to her and her daughter's ministrations Madge was left, while Graydon waited, with intense anxiety, in the porch, explaining what had occurred, with a manner much distraught, in answer to many questions.
"The cursed brute is done for now," he concluded.
Madge's faint proved obstinate, and at last Graydon began to urge the farmer to go for a physician.