“I trust you are not hurt?” said he.
“Not at all,” answered Lucy, quickly, before she had looked at him, or knew, in fact, who had assisted her to rise. “Oh,” cried she, clasping her hands, when she caught sight of his face, “but you are dreadfully hurt!”
“Oh, no,” replied he, with a ghastly smile; “merely a few scratches.”
“Oh, but you are! Alice! Mr. Whacker! The gentleman—”
But her further utterance was interrupted by the almost hysterical entrance upon the scene of Mrs. Carter, who flew from one girl to the other pale and tremulous, endeavoring to assure herself, by repeated embraces, that they were not dead. In a few moments a miscellaneous crowd had clustered around our party, through which Mary, who had witnessed the accident from her window, rushed to greet her friends. To add to the confusion, little Laura, her nerves unstrung by the scene, was wailing piteously; so that, for a moment, we forgot the Don.
“Look! oh, look!” suddenly cried Lucy, in an excited voice; and seizing me by the arm, she gave me a push. “Quick! quick!” said she, pointing towards our deliverer.
He was leaning heavily against the lamp-post, which, for support, he had clasped with his arms; but, their hold relaxed, they had fallen and hung listlessly by his side. With pallid face, vacant, upturned eyes, and parted lips, he was slowly sinking to the ground.
I sprang forward, but too late to catch him as he fell, or, rather, sank gently to the pavement, his head finding a pillow in the body of the dead horse.
“Who is he, Mary? How was he hurt?” asked Mrs. Carter, eagerly, as she saw Lucy hurrying to his side, and bending over him with an expression of agonized terror in her face.
“It is the Don. He tried to stop the horses, but was knocked down, and then both they and the carriage passed over his body.”