A low moan was the only answer.
“Call my carriage! Quick, Peleg!” Emory said, pointing across the field.
The boy did not stir or remove his hands till the conveyance drew up, and then, as Emory took him in his arms, he uttered a low cry and fainted, yes, fainted dead away, and Neil struggled into the carriage with his burden.
“Run for some water,” he said, turning to the man behind him. He sped off, and when he returned the gentleman was kneeling on the floor of the carriage, gazing like one bereft of his senses at the still, upturned face and its wealth of bronze-colored hair. It was the beautiful face of Gwendoline Gwinn!
“Come away, for God’s sake, come away, sir, before she recognizes you!” cried the blacksmith, pulling him from the vehicle.
Emory allowed himself to be dragged out, and before he could say a word the door was slammed and the carriage gone.
“Only a faint, thank God!” thought Peleg, as he picked up Gwendoline’s wig from where it had fallen when she was laid in the carriage. “She shan’t know from me that he found her out!” and he got her home safely, as he had often done before.
CHAPTER VIII.
“MY BEAUTIFUL! MY BEAUTIFUL!”
Yes, Gwendoline rode the stallion, rode to victory the colt she herself had reared. A few years back, when her father lived, he had owned the mother of Cliquot, and, from the time the beautiful sorrel came into the world until that dark day when misery, ruin and death settled on their hearts and homes, the girl had caressed and fondled the lovely creature, who, when old enough to mount, was, for her, as gentle as a lamb.
Over the hills of the “blue grass” country together they sped many, many miles, Cliquot and the tall, red-haired, pale-faced girl who was daring as a boy, reckless as an Indian, and cool and calculating beyond her years.