ed the fire and
impatience of the charger; it plunged from side to side of the narrow
street.

"Look to yourselves!" cried the horseman, as he was borne on to the
place where Lucille and the stranger stood against the wall. "Are ye
mad? Why do you not run?"

"For Heaven's sake, for mercy's sake, he is blind!" cried Lucille,
clinging to the stranger's side.

"Save yourself, my kind guide!" said the stranger. But Lucille dreamed
not of such desertion. The trooper wrested the horse's head from the
spot where they stood; with a snort, as it felt the spur, the enraged
animal lashed out with its hind-legs; and Lucille, unable to save
_both_, threw herself before the blind man, and received the shock
directed against him; her slight and delicate arm fell broken by her
side, the horseman was borne onward. "Thank God, _you_ are saved!" was
poor Lucille's exclamation; and she fell, overcome with pain and terror,
into the arms which the stranger mechanically opened to receive her.

"My guide! my friend!" cried he, "you are hurt, you--"

"No, sir," interrupted Lucille, faintly, "I am better, I am well. _This_
arm, if you please,--we are not far from your hotel now."

But the stranger's ear, tutored to every inflection of voice, told
him at once of the pain she suffered. He drew from her by degrees the
confession of the injury she had sustained; but the generous girl did
not tell him it had been incurred solely in his protection. He now
insisted on reversing their duties, and accompanying _her_ to her home;
and Lucille, almost fainting with pain, and hardly able to move, was
forced to consent. But a few steps down the next turning stood the
humble mansion of her father. They reached it; and Lucille scarcely
crossed the threshold, before she sank down, and for some minutes was
insensible to pain. It was left to the stranger to explain, and to
beseech them immediately to send for a surgeon, "the most skilful, the
most practised in the town," said he. "See, I am rich, and this is the
least I can do to atone to your generous daughter, for not forsaking
even a stranger in peril."

He held out his purse as he spoke, but the father refused the offer; and
it saved the blind man some shame, that he could not see the blush of
honest resentment with which so poor a species of renumeration was put
aside.

The young man stayed till the surgeon arrived, till the arm was set; nor
did he depart until he had obtained a promise from the mot