Nell of Shorne Mills

For a moment Nell was too startled to do anything but cry out; then, as

the man did not move, she knelt beside him, and still calling for Molly,

almost unconsciously raised his head. He had fallen on his side, but had

turned over in the instant before losing consciousness; and as Nell

lifted his head she felt something wet trickle over her hand, and knew

that it was blood.

She was very much frightened--with the exception of Dick's boyish falls

and cuts, it was the first accident at which she had "assisted"--and she

had never longed for any one as she longed for Molly. But neither Molly

nor any one else came, and Nell, in a helpless, dazed kind of fashion,

wiped the blood from the wound.

Then suddenly she thought of water, and setting his head down as gently

as she could, she ran to the stream, saturated her handkerchief, and,

returning, took his head on her lap again, and bathed his forehead.

While she was doing this she recovered her presence of mind sufficiently

to look at him with something like the desire to know what he was like;

and, with all a woman's quickness of perception, saw that he was

extremely good-looking; that he was rather dark than fair; that though

he was young--twenty-nine, thirty, flashed through her mind--the hair on

his temples was faintly flecked with gray.

But something more than the masculine beauty of the face struck her,

struck her vaguely, and that was the air of distinction which she had

noticed in his bearing as he came down the road, and an expression of

weariness in the faint lines about the mouth and eyes.

She was aware, without knowing why, that he was extremely well dressed;

she saw that the ungloved hand was long and thin--the hand of a

well-bred man--and that everything about him indicated wealth and the

gentleman.

All these observations required but a second or two--a man would only

have got at them after an hour--and, almost before they were made, he

opened his eyes with the usual dazed and puzzled expression which an

individual wears when he has been knocked out of time and is coming back

to consciousness.

As his eyes opened, Nell noticed that they were dark--darker than they

should have been to match his hair--and that they were anything but

commonplace ones. He looked up at her for an instant or two, then

muttered something under his breath--Nell was almost certain that he

swore--and aloud, in the toneless voice of the newly conscious, said: "I came off, didn't I?"

"Yes," said Nell.