A girl’s voice gave out the mountain carol ringingly above.  His heart and all his fancies were in motion at the sound.  He leaned on an elbow to listen; the slide threatened him, and he resumed his full stretch, determined to take her for a dream.  He was of the class of youths who, in apprehension that their bright season may not be permanent, choose to fortify it by a systematic contempt of material realities unless they come in the fairest of shapes, and as he was quite sincere in this feeling and election of the right way to live, disappointment and sullenness overcame him on hearing men’s shouts and steps; despite his helpless condition he refused to stir, for they had jarred on his dream.  Perhaps his temper, unknown to himself, had been a little injured by his mishap, and he would not have been sorry to charge them with want of common humanity in passing him; or he did not think his plight so bad, else he would have bawled after them had they gone by:  far the youths of his description are fools only upon system,—­however earnestly they indulge the present self-punishing sentiment.  The party did not pass; they stopped short, they consulted, and a feminine tongue more urgent than the others, and very musical, sweet to hear anywhere, put him in tune.  She said, ‘Brother! brother!’ in German.  Our philosopher flung off his hat.

‘You see!’ said the lady’s brother.

’Ask him, Anton,’she said to their guide.

‘And quick!’ her brother added.

The guide scrambled along to him, and at a closer glance shouted:  ’The
Englishman!’ wheeling his finger to indicate what had happened to the
Tomnoddy islander.

His master called to know if there were broken bones, as if he could stop for nothing else.

The cripple was raised.  The gentleman and lady made their way to him, and he tried his hardest to keep from tottering on the slope in her presence.  No injury had been done to the leg; there was only a stiffness, and an idiotic doubling of the knee, as though at each step his leg pronounced a dogged negative to the act of walking.  He said something equivalent to ‘this donkey leg,’ to divert her charitable eyes from a countenance dancing with ugly twitches.  She was the Samaritan.  A sufferer discerns his friend, though it be not the one who physically assists him:  he is inclined by nature to put material aid at a lower mark than gentleness, and her brief words of encouragement, the tone of their delivery yet more, were medical to his blood, better help than her brother’s iron arm, he really believed.  Her brother and the guide held him on each side, and she led to pick out the safer footing for him; she looked round and pointed to some projection that would form a step; she drew attention to views here and there, to win excuses for his resting; she did not omit to soften her brother’s visible impatience as well, and this was the art which affected her keenly sensible debtor most.