“Haven’t you dropped it somewhere there in the bunk?” asked her father.

“No.  It’s on the floor of the wagon.  I remember now it fell off when I tumbled!  And it will be trodden upon and crushed!  Couldn’t you run down, ahead of me, and warn them, papa, dear?  Mr. Tenbrook will have to go so slowly with me.”  She tumbled out of the bunk with singular alacrity, shook herself and her skirts into instantaneous gracefulness, and fitted the velvet cap on her straying hair.  Then she said hurriedly, “Run quick, papa dear, and as you go, call him in and say I am quite ready.”

Thus adjured, the obedient parent disappeared in the darkness.  With him also disappeared Miss Amy’s singular alacrity.  Sitting down carefully again on the edge of the bunk, she leaned against the post with a certain indefinable languor that was as touching as it was graceful.  I need not tell any feminine readers that there was no dissimulation in all this,—­no coquetry, no ostentation,—­and that the young girl was perfectly sincere!  But the masculine reader might like to know that the simple fact was that, since she had regained consciousness, she had been filled with remorse for her capricious and ungenerous rejection of Tenbrook’s proffered service.  More than that, she felt she had periled her life in that moment of folly, and that this man—­this hero—­had saved her.  For hero he was, even if he did not fulfill her ideal,—­it was only she that was not a heroine.  Perhaps if he had been more like what she wished she would have felt this less keenly; love leaves little room for the exercise of moral ethics.  So Miss Amy Forester, being a good girl at bottom, and not exactly loving this man, felt towards him a frank and tender consideration which a more romantic passion would have shrunk from showing.  Consequently, when Tenbrook entered a moment later, he found Amy paler and more thoughtful, but, as he fancied, much prettier than before, looking up at him with eyes of the sincerest solicitude.

Nevertheless, he remained standing near the door, as if indicating a possible intrusion, his face wearing a look of lowering abstraction.  It struck her that this might be the effect of his long hair and general uncouthness, and this only spurred her to a fuller recognition of his other qualities.

“I am afraid,” she began, with a charming embarrassment, “that instead of resting satisfied with your kindness in carrying me up here, I will have to burden you again with my dreadful weakness, and ask you to carry me down also.  But all this seems so little after what you have just done and for which I can never, never hope to thank you!” She clasped her two little hands together, holding her gloves between, and brought them down upon her lap in a gesture as prettily helpless as it was unaffected.

“I have done scarcely anything,” he said, glancing away towards the fire, “and—­your father has thanked me.”

“You have saved my life!”