.

She shuddered, as she swooped about toward this possible corpse. It
might be that he was killed, and half the fault hers. No wonder her
fine color, shining in the right parts of an admirably drawn face, all
disappeared instantly.

But she evidently was not frightened.

She halted, kneeled, looked curiously at the stranger, and then
proceeded, in a perfectly cool and self-possessed way, to pick him up.

A solid fellow, heavy to lift in his present lumpish condition of
dead-weight! She had to tug mightily to get him up into a sitting
position. When he was raised, all the backbone seemed gone from his
spine, and it took the whole force of her vigorous arms to sustain him.

The effort was enough to account for the return of her color. It came
rushing back splendidly. Cheeks, forehead, everything but nose, blushed.
The hard work of lifting so much avoirdupois, and possibly, also, the
novelty of supporting so much handsome fellow, intensified all her hues.
Her eyes--blue, or that shade even more faithful than blue--deepened;
and her pale golden hair grew several carats--not carrots--brighter.

She was repaid for her active sympathy at once by discovering that this
big, awkward thing was not a dead, but only a stunned, body. It had an
ugly bump and a bleeding cut on its manly skull, but otherwise was quite
an agreeable object to contemplate, and plainly on its "unembarrassed
brow Nature had written 'Gentleman.'"

As this young lady had never had a fair, steady stare at a stunned hero
before, she seized her advantage. She had hitherto been distant with
the other sex. She had no brother. Not one of her male cousins had ever
ventured near enough to get those cousinly privileges that timid cousins
sigh for and plucky cousins take, if they are worth taking.

Wade's impressive face, though for the moment blind as a statue's, also
seized its advantage and stared at her intently, with a pained and
pleading look, new to those resolute features.

Wade was entirely unconscious of the great hit he had made by his
tumble; plump into the arms of this heroine! There were fellows extant
who would have suffered any imaginable amputation, any conceivable
mauling, any fling from the apex of anything into the lowest deeps of
anywhere, for the honor he was now enjoying.

But all he knew was that his skull was a beehive in an uproar, and that
one lobe of his brain was struggling to swarm off. His legs and arms
felt as if they belonged