ompanions she had ever known. She liked
him better than any one she had ever seen; and his words rang in her
ears long after they were spoken. But even imagination, wicked spinner
of golden threads as she is, never drew one link between his fate and
hers. The time had not yet come, if it was to come.

She walked on, however, through the wood; and just when she was emerging
from the thicker part into the clumps and scattered trees, she saw a
stranger before her, leaning against the stump of an old hawthorn, and
seeming to suffer pain. He was young, handsome, well-dressed, and there
was a gun lying at his feet. But as Emily drew nearer, she saw blood
slowly trickling from his arm, and falling on the gray sand of the path.

She was not one to suffer shyness to curb humanity; and she exclaimed at
once, with a look of alarm, "I am afraid you are hurt, sir. Had you not
better come up to the house?"

The young man looked at her, fainted, and answered in a low tone, "The
gun has gone off, caught by a branch, and has shattered my arm. I
thought I could reach the cottage by the park gates, but I feel faint."

"Stay, stay a moment," cried Emily, "I will run to the hall and bring
assistance--people to assist you upon a carriage."

"No, no!" answered the stranger quickly, "I cannot go there--I will not
go there! The cottage is nearer," he continued more calmly; "I think
with a little help I could reach it, if I could staunch the blood."

"Let me try," exclaimed Emily; and with ready zeal, she tied her
handkerchief round his arm, not without a shaking hand indeed, but with
firmness and some skill.

"Now lean upon me," she said, when she had done; "the cottage is indeed
nearer, but you would have better tendance if you could reach the hall."

"No, no, the cottage," replied the stranger, "I shall do well there."

The cottage was perhaps two hundred yards nearer to the spot on which
they stood than the hall; but there was an eagerness about the young
man's refusal to go to the latter, which Emily remarked. Suspicion
indeed was alive to her mind; but those were days when laws concerning
game, which have every year been becoming less and less strict, were
hardly less severe than in the time of William Rufus. Every day, in the
country life which she led, she heard some tale of poaching or its
punishment. The stranger had a gun with him; she had found him in her
father's park; he was unwilling even in suffering and need of help to g