“Now,” he said, aloud, to them—and his voice was harsh with anxiety—“spoil you or not, you may go back at the top of your speed,” and he sent them, wild-eyed and breathing hard, straight back over their tracks. And as he neared the place where the mare had fallen, he held his breath and his heart grew sick within him.
It was an unfrequented road, and no one had come over it since himself. As he turned the bend he saw just what he had expected to see, and a great sob shook him. Then he gathered himself, with a mighty grip upon his whole being, for what there might be left to do for her.
The brown mare lay in a pitiful heap, her fore legs doubled under her. Beneath her, kept from being thrown over Betty’s head by her foot in the stirrup, and caught under the roll of the mare’s body, lay the slender figure of her rider.
“Oh—God!” groaned the man, as he threw himself upon the ground beside her. But as he fearfully turned her head toward him, that he might see first the worst there was, two dark-lashed, gray eyes slowly unclosed and looked up into his, and a smile, so faint that it was but the hint of a smile, trembled about her mouth.
In the swiftness of his relief Jarvis had to lay stern hands upon his own impulses. He smiled back at her with lips not quite steady. Then he set about releasing her.
When he had her out upon the grass she lay very white and still again. “Can you tell me where you are hurt?” he begged. Then, as she did not answer, he dashed off to a brook which gurgled in a hollow a rod away, and, coming back with a soaked handkerchief, gently bathed her face and hair. After a little her eyes unclosed again.
“I—don’t think I’m—badly hurt. My shoulder and—my—knee——”
“I’ll get you home as soon as you feel able.”
She turned her head slowly toward the road. Divining her thought, Jarvis quietly placed himself between her eyes and the body of the brown mare. She understood.
“Is she dreadfully hurt?”