nch. As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, with
its instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her a
streak of blood on Maurice's face.... He had tripped and fallen, and his
head had struck one of the blackened stones.

"He is dead," she said again, aloud. She put the lantern on the ground
and knelt beside him; she had an idea that she should place her hand on
his heart to see if he were alive. "He isn't," she told herself; but she
laid her fingers, which were shaking so that she could not unfasten his
coat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was any
pulse; she knew nothing, except that he was "dead." She said this in a
whisper, over and over. "He is dead. He is dead." The rain came down in
torrents; the trees creaked and groaned in the wind; twice there were
flashes of lightning and appalling roars of thunder. Maurice was
perfectly still. The smoky glimmer of the lantern played on the thin
streak of blood and made it look as though it was moving--trickling--

Then Eleanor began to think: "There ought to be a doctor...." If
she left him, to bring help, he might bleed to death before she
could get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew that
she did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope.
With hope, a single thought possessed her. _She must take him down
the mountain...._ But how? She could not carry him;--she had managed to
prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully,
on his breast--but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. And
Lion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he were," she
thought.

She was entirely calm, but her mind was working rapidly: The wagon
was in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? The road was
downhill.... Almost to Doctor Bennett's door....

Instantly she sprang to her feet and, with the pale gleam of the lantern
zigzagging across the path, she ran back to the shed; just as she
reached it, a glimmer of light fell on the soaked earth, and she looked
up with a start and saw the moon peering out between two ragged, swiftly
moving clouds; then all was black again--but the rain was lessening, and
there had been no lightning for several minutes. "He will die; I must
save him," she said, her lips stiff with horror. She lifted the shafts
of the wagon, and gave a little pull; it moved easily enough, and,
guiding it along the slight decline, she brought it to Maurice's