"Badly hurt, this one," said the stranger, as he raised the head of the man in whose cause he himself had received the blow which made him still feel dizzy, and who was a tall, well-made fellow, thirty years old or thereabout, in the ordinary dress of a labourer or shepherd of those parts. He had been not only savagely beaten, but had received an apparently deep knife-wound above the collar-bone during the scuffle.
"Badly hurt, he seems to be," the stranger repeated.
"Oh, I hope not!" said the anxious watcher, stepping forward and stooping down to observe more closely.
And then, without showing any signs of weakness or affectation, she rendered such assistance as time and place allowed, much as a nurse in a hospital would have done, the traveller thought, and with equal skill and presence of mind.
In a moment or two the man revived sufficiently to open his eyes and to say, faintly—
"Thank you, Miss Helen; and thank God you are safe. I was afraid it was all up with us both."
"It would have been, Styles, but for this good man who came to our help," said the young woman.
"He has done a good deed to-day, if he never did before," said the wounded man. "I suppose you knew who those fellows were?"
Yes, she knew two of them well enough, the girl answered. They were the men she had witnessed against.
"But do not say any more—it only hurts you" (this was manifestly true, for the man drew his breath thick and painfully)—"we must get you home as soon as we can. Do you think you can mount your horse?" she asked, forgetting her own injunction of silence.