each,--out into the
open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,--carried as easily as if he
had been a babe, in the strong arms of "The Wonder" of the gymnasium,
the captain of the Atalanta, who had little dreamed of the use she was
to make of her natural gifts and her school-girl accomplishments.

Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers! It was a sound that
none of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear again,
unless he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a sinking
vessel. Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their emotion, who
had stood in white despair as they thought of these two young lives
soon to be wrapped in their burning shroud,--those stern men--the old
sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron tradesmen of the
city counting-room--sobbed like hysteric women; it was like a convulsion
that overcame natures unused to those deeper emotions which many who are
capable of experiencing die without ever knowing.

This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared at
the same moment.

As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his
eyes opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost supernatural
lucidity. Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was still supporting
him. His head was resting on her bosom. Through his awakening senses
stole the murmurs of the living cradle which rocked him with the
wavelike movements of respiration, the soft susurrus of the air that
entered with every breath, the double beat of the heart which throbbed
close to his ear. And every sense, and every instinct, and every
reviving pulse told him in language like a revelation from another
world that a woman's arms were around him, and that it was life, and not
death, which her embrace had brought him.

She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the doctor
made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp command:--

"Do not move him a hair's breadth," he said. "Wait until the litter
comes. Any sudden movement might be dangerous. Has anybody a brandy
flask about him?"

One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather
awkward, but did not come forward.

The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.

"I han't got no brandy," he said, "but there's a drop or two of old
Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any
help. I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n'