Yet almost before the prayer was breathed the child with incredible swiftness scudded across the bending board and stood safe by his side!
He sprang up, caught her hand, and raced with her down the rocky steep, calling wildly to the men in the wagon as he ran. Bouncer, no longer watched, vented his pent-up excitement in noisy yelps; and above the din Billy heard loud angry words in a foreign tongue that he knew were execrations, commands to return.
It seemed to him that his voice made no sound; that May Nell never ran so slowly; that the travellers would surely not hear him, not stop. How could they hear in all the noise?
Yet they had already stopped, turned, and driven quickly to the house, hurried by the frenzy in the boy’s tones.
“Take her in,” Billy gasped. “They stole her; they’re after—save her—hurry—” He could say no more, but suddenly collapsed and sank to the ground; and the last sight he remembered was the dark Italian at the house corner, talking fast, with one hand in a sling, the other waving a knife threateningly.
Yes, Billy had fainted for the first time in his life. The two men, heedless of the Italian, took the boy up gently. One sat in the bed of the wagon and held Billy as easily as possible, while the other lifted May Nell to the seat, mounted beside her, and drove rapidly back to town.
CHAPTER XVII
BILLY TO-DAY
THINGS happened very fast the next few days. “Something doing every minute,” Billy put it. Billy had neither been ill nor injured,—only exhausted. The wound on his scalp had been worse in appearance than in fact; and a couple of long nights in sleep, and easy days at home mended him completely.