“They are taking him away!  Will you never come?  Is it you—­uncle Philip?  Oh—­why—­don’t you come to me?  It’s Ruth.”

“It is I—­Father Orin,” said the priest near by.

She did not reply, nor even glance at him, although the cloud curtain was now suddenly lifted again, and she could see clearly.  She did not notice that all the horsemen had vanished.  She saw only the motionless form of the man she loved lying some distance away.  It was plain that he had pressed the assassins as far from her as he could; that his outstretched arms had fallen in some supreme effort.  The hunting-knife glittered in the moonlight at a distance from his hand.  He must have fought on with his bare hands after his only weapon had been struck from his grasp.  His eyes were closed, and his face was like the face of the dead.

Ruth, dropping to the earth beside him, had taken his head on her lap before the priest could come up and dismount.  She did not reply, nor even hear his alarmed questioning.

“See if he is living, Father,” she said.  “Here, put your hand on his heart—­here—­where my hand is.  Make haste.  Why are you so slow?” Then flashing round on him in her impetuous way:  “Why don’t you say that you feel his heart beat?  Of course you do!  Of course he is alive.  How could he be dead—­in a moment—­a flash—­like this!  He is so young.  He has only begun to live.  And so strong and brave.  Oh, so brave, Father!  Dear Father Orin—­if you could have seen how fearlessly he stood, between them and me—­waiting for them to come!  Only one, too, against so many.  But I wasn’t afraid while I could see him.  No, not for a moment, even against them all.  And then when it was dark, and I couldn’t see him, and I could only hear—­” she broke down, shuddering and weeping.

While she spoke the priest had been unfastening Paul’s collar and was trying to find the wound.  The bosom of his shirt was already darkly dyed with blood.

“He is alive; his heart is still beating,” said Father Orin, huskily.

This daring, gifted young doctor had come to be like his own son in their work together for the suffering.  He turned back his coat and found the deep knife-wound in his shoulder, and set about stanching the flow of blood with the simple knowledge of surgery that the life of the wilderness taught to all.  But it was Ruth who thought of Paul’s medical case which always hung on his saddle.  The horse was gone, but the case was lying not far away, on the ground where it had fallen, and there were bandages and lint in it, as she hoped there would be.  But when they had done all that they could, he still lay motionless and barely breathing.  She dropped down beside him in fresh alarm, and again took his head on her lap.  Father Orin stood up, looking helplessly through the moonlight and murmuring something about getting the doctor back to his cabin.

“We will take him to Cedar House,” she said.  “There is no one to nurse him in his own cabin.  Oh!” with a smothered scream.  “They are coming back!”