“Oh, heaven, he is dead!” the girl moaned in anguish.
Her heart sank like lead to see him lying there so still, with a little stream of blood trickling from his temple, where it had struck against a jagged rock.
“Oh, if I only had some water,” she sighed, and just then the trickle of a little spring by the side of the road caught her ears. She ran and filled her riding cap with the clear fluid, and dashed it in his face.
Oh, joy! he gasped once or twice, and opened on her anxious face a pair of the bonniest dark blue eyes she had ever met—eyes that seemed to go exactly with the glossy curls of thick brown hair.
When his gaze met hers he smiled, faintly, and sighed:
“I—I—where am I? Oh, I remember now. I was in an accident; my horse ran away, and I was thrown out of the runabout. Was I killed? Is this heaven, and are you an angel?”
Leola laughed a happy, rippling laugh, sweet as music to his ears.
“An angel? No, indeed,” she cried; “and this is not heaven, either, only a rough, rocky road, where you fell when you pitched out of your trap. Oh! are you hurt very bad? Does your poor head pain you very much?”
Their faces were very close together, for she had pillowed his head on her tender arm, and he could feel the quick throbs of her excited heart as she waited for his answer.
“I—I—do not feel very bad,” he began, then suddenly lapsed into unconsciousness again, and this time it seemed to her that he was surely gone forever.