is ear, getting as cold as ice as it sank under his
collar.

They raised him a little more, and he opened his eyes on the circle of
hushed and excited men thronging about him. He saw Brann, with wild,
scared face, standing in his cutter and peering over the heads of the
crowd.

"How do you feel now?" asked the doctor.

"Can you hear us? Albert, do you know me?" called the girl.

His lips moved stiffly, but he smiled a little, and at length whispered
slowly, "Yes; I guess--I'm all--right."

"Put him into my cutter; Maud, get in here, too," the doctor commanded,
with all the authority of a physician in a small village. The crowd
opened, and silenced its muttered comments as the doctor and Troutt
helped the wounded man into the sleigh. The pain in his head grew worse,
but Albert's perception of things grew in proportion; he closed his eyes
to the sun, but in the shadow of Maud's breast opened them again and
looked up at her. He felt a vague, childlike pleasure in knowing she was
holding him in her arms; he felt the sleigh moving; he thought of his
mother, and how it would frighten her if she knew.

The doctor was driving the horse and walking beside the sleigh, and the
people were accosting him. Albert could catch their words now and then,
and the reply:

"No; he isn't killed, nor anything near it; he's stunned, that's all; he
isn't bleeding now. No; he'll be all right in a day or two."

"Hello!" said a breathless, hearty voice, "what the deuce y' been doing
with my pardner? Bert, old fellow, are you there?" Hartley asked,
clinging to the edge of the moving cutter, and peering into his friend's
face. Albert smiled.

"I'm here--what there is left of me," he replied faintly.

"Glory! how'd it happen?" he asked of the girl.

"I don't know--I couldn't see--we ran into a culvert," replied Maud.

"Weren't you hurt?"

"Not a bit. I stayed in the cutter."

Albert felt a steady return of waves of pain, but did not know that they
were waves of returning life. He groaned, and tried to rise. The girl
gently but firmly restrained him. Hartley was walking beside the doctor,
talking loudly. "It was a devilish thing to do; the scoundrel ought 'o
be jugged!"

Albert groaned, and tried to rise again. "I'm bleeding yet; I'm soaking
you!"

The girl shuddered, but remained firm.

"No; we're 'most home."

She felt no shame, but a certain exaltation, as she looked into the
curious faces she saw in groups on the sidewalk.