Although they were hot on his trail he had managed to get through Middleton in the night unobserved and would probably have reached the hills and got away North, unseen; but he met a little four-year-old boy on the road, who had fallen and hurt himself and was sitting in the rain and crying bitterly. There was nothing serious about it, but the child had a large bruise on his forehead. Ian had hesitated a moment, looking apprehensively behind, but stopped and bathed the bruise at a beck close by, comforted the child and carried him to his home and set him down just outside the little garden.
The delay, however, had cost him dear; the day was now fully up and two or three people noticed the stranger as he left the road to try and make for the steepest ground where pursuit would be less easy. Shortly afterwards he had seen men in the distance, both on foot and on horseback, setting out on his track and, with infinite difficulty, availing himself of every hollow, at the risk of being seen at any moment he had made his way to the river. If only he could get across, he argued, he might consider himself tolerably safe. They would never suspect that he was on that side and it was in any case the best road to the North. He knew little of the country, of course, or that there was a better place to attempt the feat lower down the stream. He leaped in where he found himself and being a strong swimmer he made his way over but was sucked down by an eddy and dashed against the cliff on the opposite side, but on coming to the surface again he had just sufficient strength to get out of the water and crawl along the ledge of rock to where the overhanging leaves afforded at least a partial concealment. Indeed, the place was such an unlikely one that anybody actually searching for him would probably have overlooked it.
He had lain there for hours, the pain in his head being intense. One ankle was badly sprained and much swollen and he felt sure that he had broken his left collar bone. He had had nothing to eat for days and the dizziness and the pain together caused him repeatedly to fall into a fitful doze from which he would wake trembling, with his heart beating violently. It was after one of these dozes that he woke and, on opening his eyes, saw a little figure in white bending over him, whose large dark blue eyes, filled with pity, were looking into his face. Her long hair fell down so as to touch him and her beautiful arms rested on the rock on either side of his head. At first he thought it was a water-sprite with dripping locks, of which many tales were told by the country folk, and then he noticed the blood oozing from below the bandage on the little arm. “Who are you?” he asked at last, as his senses gradually returned.
“My name is Aline and I have come to help you,” she said.
“But, sweet child, how can you do that?”
As his brain became clearer he became more able to face the situation. Who could this exquisite fairy-like little damsel possibly be, and how could she ever have heard of him and why should any family that wished to help him do it by the hands of any one so young? Then she was wet and wounded, which made the case still more extraordinary. “Little one,” he went on, “why have you come; do you know who I am?”
“No,” she said, “but I saw you lying on the rock and so I came across to try and do something for you.”
“You do not mean to say that you swam that raging river?”
“It was the only way to reach you.”
“And you are really a little girl and not a water fay?” he asked half playfully and half wondering if there really could be such things, as so many people seriously believed. It was almost easier to believe in fairies than to believe that a little girl had actually swum that flood.