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.