And in that exquisite spot, that fair glade of the sparkling fountains, I gave the noble fellow long draughts of sweet refreshment. The rescued lady trailed herself across the grass and knelt beside us. My horse, still heaving with his honorable gallop, drooped his head over the group. A picture to be remembered!
Who says that knighthood is no more? Who says the days of chivalry are past? Who says it, is a losel.
Brent was roughly, but not dangerously, shot along the arm. The bullet had ploughed an ugly path along the muscles of the fore-arm and upper-arm, and was lodged in the shoulder. A bad wound; but no bones broken. If he could but have rest and peace and surgery! But if not, after the fever of our day, after the wearing anguish of our doubtful gallop; if not?—
Ellen Clitheroe revived in a moment, when she saw another needed her care. Woman’s gentle duty of nurse found her ready for its offices. My blundering good-will gave place willingly to her fine-fingered skilfulness. She forgot her own weariness, while she was magnetizing away the pangs of the wounded man by her delicate touch.
He looked at me, and smiled with total content.
“My father?” asked the lady, faintly, as if she dreaded the answer.
“Safe!” said I. “Free from the Mormons. He is waiting for you with a friend.”
Her tears began to flow. She was busy bandaging the wound. All was silent about us, except the pleasant gurgle of the fountains, when we heard a shot up the defile.
The sharp sound of a pistol-shot came leaping down the narrow chasm, flying before the pursuit of its own thundering echoes. Those grand old walls of the Alley, facing each other there for the shade and sunshine of long, peaceful æons, gilded by the glow of countless summers, splashed with the gray of antique lichens on their purple fronts, draped for unnumbered Octobers with the scarlet wreaths of frost-ripened trailers,—those solemn walls standing there in old silence, unbroken save by the uproar of winter floods, or by the humming flight of summer winds, or the louder march of tempests crowding on,—those silent walls, written close with the record of God’s handiwork in the long cycles of creation, lifted up their indignant voices when the shot within proclaimed to them the undying warfare of man with man, and, roaring after, they hurled that murderous noise forth from their presence. The quick report sprang out from the chasm into the quiet glade, where the lady knelt, busy with offices of mercy, and there it lost its vengeful tone, and was blended with the rumble of the mingled rivulets of the springs. The thundering echoes paused within, slowly proclaiming quiet up from crag to crag, until one after another they whispered themselves to silence. No sound remained, save the rumble of the stream, as it flowed away down the opening valley into the haze, violet under gold, of that warm October sunset.
I sprang up when I heard the shot, and stood on the alert. There were two up the Alley; which, after the shot, was living, and which dead?