accidents, was not even
stunned. Phyl was lying like a dead creature just where she had been flung
amongst some bent grass.

He rushed to her. She was not dead, her pulse told that, nor did she seem
injured in any way. He left her, ran to the horses, undid the traces and
got the fallen horse on its feet, then he stripped them of their harness
and turned them loose.

Having done this he returned to the girl. Phyl was just regaining
consciousness; as he reached her she half sat up leaning on her right
arm.

"Where are the horses?" said she. They were her first thought.

"I've let them loose--there they are."

She turned her head in the direction towards which he pointed. The horses,
free of their harness, had already found a grass patch and were beginning
to graze. The broken phaeton lay in the sunshine and the cushions flung to
right and left showed as blue squares amidst the green of the grass; a
light wind from the west was stirring the grass tops and a bird was
singing somewhere its thin piping note, the only sound from all that
expanse of radiant blue sky and green forsaken country.

"How do you feel now?" asked Silas.

"All right," said Phyl.

"We'd better get somewhere," he went on; "there are some cabins beyond
that rice field, I can see their tops. There's sure to be some one there
and we can send for help."

Phyl struggled to her feet, refusing assistance.

"Let us go there," said she. She turned to look at the horses.

"They'll be all right," said Silas; "there's lots of grass and there's a
pond over there--they'd live here a month without harm."

He led the way to the fence, helped her over, and then, without a word
they began to plod across the rice field.

When they reached the cabins they found them deserted, almost in ruins.
They faced a great tract of tree-grown ground. In the old plantation days
this place would have been populous, for to the right there were ruins of
other cabins stretching along and bordering an old grass road that bent
westward to lose itself amongst the trees, but now there was nothing but
desolation and the wind that stirred the mossy beards of the live oaks and
the rank green foliage of weeds and sunflowers. An old disused well faced
the cabins.

Phyl gave a little shudder as she looked around her. Her mind, still
slightly confused by the accident and beaten upon by troubles, could find
nothing with which to reply to the facts of the situation--alone here with
Si