The silence of the dead reigned around—not even a groan from within the jambed and crushed vehicle gave token of life still remaining in the frames of those whom Hal knew it yet contained.
With almost superhuman strength, Hal forced open the twisted, bent, and partly-shattered door. A hurried, sickening glance showed him the mangled body of Colonel Mires, half in the carriage and half buried in the broken box-seat, his head and shoulders hidden from view by the splinters and ruins of that part of the vehicle.
Doubled up at the bottom of the carriage appeared the forms of two senseless females; with a groan of acute agony, he wound his arms tenderly about one of them, and with great difficulty, because of his gentleness, he contrived to liberate her.
He bore her away from the spot, to a small patch of grass, and there gently laid her down, and bent over to see if any sign of life remained.
It was Flora whom he had thus rescued, and who, without a token of life, lay motionless—the very reality it seemed of death in as fair a form as was ever presented to mortal eye.
Hal knelt by her in a state of frenzy—his eyes inflamed, his throat swollen; he appeared the incarnation of despair. So intense was his emotion, that he was wholly without power to move.
The agent bent over the prostrate form of the senseless girl, and regarded her face with scrutinising eyes. He, though agitated, was of course not so deeply affected as his companion, and he exclaimed—
“She’s alive—she has only fainted, rub her hands briskly, she’ll come too directly—I don’t believe she is hurt, she has been frightened into a swoon.”
The man commenced actively chafing her hands as he spoke. Hal, who had seemed paralysed, now followed his example. The friction upon her palms and the cool air which played upon her pallid features had the desired effect, and shortly her eyelids began to work tremulously, then she uttered a deep-drawn sigh and opened her eyes.
With a sudden motion she rose half up, looked wildly round her, her dim sight took in the face of the agent; she turned from him with a shudder, and her eyes fell upon Hal’s intensely anxious face, within a foot of her own. A low cry escaped her lips.