"She is not dead but sleeping," he said, as he remarked, with no small satisfaction, the regular heaving of her breast. "But what a place to choose for a bed, so near the spot where her mother died. Dorothy!" he cried, in a loud voice, "awake. It is I, the father who calls thee."
The girl unclosed her eyes, sat up, and gazed upon him with a vague unmeaning stare.
"Dorothy, lass, don't you know the father?"
He sat down beside her, and took her cold little hand in his. "What brought you here, child? Thou hast lost thy senses sure, to be sleeping upon the cold damp ground. It is enough to kill thee."
The well-known voice, still more the kind words, recalled Dorothy to consciousness, and banished from her mind the horrors of the night.
"Father, dear father!" she whispered in a voice scarcely audible, as she nestled her head upon his broad shoulder, "how kind of you to come to find me."
"Nay, it was not I but the doorg you have to thank, Dolly, it was he that brought me here, or you might have lain on the wet heath till the day of judgment. But why did you not come to the house—were you afraid that I should turn you away from my door?"
"I was on my way home, father, but something dreadful happened to me last night. Oh, so dreadful, that only to think of it makes my flesh creep." She clung to the old man, and shivered in every limb.
"Speak out, lass. What was it? What ails thee? Did any one insult thee?"