He laid her down then on the grass and bathed her face and hands with water.
But Molly lay for many minutes still and speechless, and he began to grow very anxious as well as curious over the girl whose face as seen by the light of the rising moon looked very lovely with its clear-cut, piquant features, round, dimpled chin, and slender black brows and thick, fringed lashes.
The man leaning over her was as handsome in his way as she in hers was lovely. He was tall and stately looking, with a splendid physique, and a noble, high-bred face, large eyes that looked black by night, but by day were blue as the violets of his native hills. His hair was of a chestnut tinge, and lay in luxuriant masses about his temples. It was the face of a man about thirty years old, and the golden brown mustache shaded lips that were strong, and grave, and proud, and perhaps a little stern. In dress and manner he was the perfect gentleman.
“Whom can she be? I am quite certain that she belongs to no one in the neighborhood,” he was thinking for at least the twentieth time, when suddenly a sigh heaved Molly’s breast, and the dark eyes opened wide on the face of the stranger.
At first she regarded him in dreamy surprise. Her head lay on his arm, but she did not seem to notice it, only murmured, quaintly, and with an air of relief:
“I thought I was dead!”
“I thought so, too, but I am very happy to find that you are not,” said the stranger in a pleasantly musical voice. “Tell me, do you feel any pain?”
Molly groaned as she half lifted her form from where it rested against him.
“I feel as if all my bones were broken. I fell out of a tree, you know,” she said.
An expression of uneasiness crossed his face.