When she again opened her eyes she was lying in the arms of some one on the shore, with a circle of troubled, anxious faces around her. She sprang up wildly.
"Are they saved?" she exclaimed, looking around.
"Yes; thanks to your heroism, our lives are preserved," said a voice beside her.
She turned hastily round. It was Doctor Nicholas Wiseman. Another form lay stark and rigid on the sand, with men bending over him.
A deadly sickness came over Gipsy—she knew not why it was. She turned away, with a violent shudder, from his outstretched hand, and bent over the still form on the sand. All made way for her with respectful deference; and she knelt beside him and looked in his face. He was a boy—a mere youth, but singularly handsome, with a look of deep repose on his almost beautiful face.
"Is he dead?" she cried, in a voice of piercing anguish.
"No; only stunned," said the doctor, coming over and feeling his pulse.
"Take him to Sunset Hall, then," said Gipsy, turning to some of the men standing by.
A shutter was procured, and the senseless form of the lad placed upon it, and, raising it on their shoulders, they bore him in the direction of the old mansion-house.
Doctor Wiseman went toward his own home. And Gipsy, the free mountain maid, leaped up the rocks, feeling, for the first time in her life, sick and giddy. Oh! better, far better for her had they but perished in the seething waves!