When I came to myself the moon had risen—risen good and high, too—for it showed well above the orchard wall where it was broken, and over the palisades with which Hobby Stennis had mended it with his own hand.
Elsie was seated by me. She had opened up my coat, and undone my waistcoat and shirt at the neck. There was a pleasant coolness, and she was slopping about with a wet handkerchief—not very big, indeed, being one of her own, and better adapted for dabbing dry girls' eyes, than for recovering a man out of a faint.
I sat up.
"How did you come here?" I said.
"How did you?" she answered, very shortly; "lie still!"
"Shan't!"
"Still in the sulks?"
"I say, Elsie, what was that?"
"What?"
I was looking all about, you may be sure, and a little way off under the shadow of the great broken-down gates of the orchard, I saw a heap lie darkly, curiously loose and stretched out, a kind of wisp in the form of a man, something like a Guy Fawkes dragged through water instead of fire.