hough I
could not see him. I ran the fingers of my right hand through the loose
pebbles about me, and his ear caught the slight noise. In a moment I
heard his strong feet coming across them toward me.

"Mon Dieu! mam'zelle," he exclaimed, "what has happened to you?"

I tried to smile as his honest, brown face bent over me, full of alarm.
It was so great a relief to see a face like his after that long, weary
agony, for it had been agony to me, who did not know what bodily pain
was like. But in trying to smile I felt my lips drawn, and my eyes
blinded with tears.

"I've fallen down the cliff," I said, feebly, "and I am hurt."

"Mon Dieu!" he cried again. The strong man shook, and his hand trembled
as he stooped down and laid it under my head to lift it up a little. His
agitation touched me to the heart, even then, and I did my best to speak
more calmly.

"Tardif," I whispered, "it is not very much, and I might have been
killed. I think my foot is hurt, and I am quite sure my arm is broken."

Speaking made me feel giddy and faint again, so I said no more. He
lifted me in his arms as easily and tenderly as a mother lifts up her
child, and carried me gently, taking slow and measured strides up the
steep slope which led homeward. I closed my eyes, glad to leave myself
wholly in his charge, and to have nothing further to dread; yet moaning
a little, involuntarily, whenever a fresh pang of pain shot through me.
Then he would cry again, "Mon Dieu!" in a beseeching tone, and pause for
an instant as if to give me rest. It seemed a long time before we
reached the farm-yard gate, and he shouted, with a tremendous voice, to
his mother to come and open it. Fortunately she was in sight, and came
toward us quickly.

He carried me into the house, and laid me down on the _lit de
fouaille_--a wooden frame forming a sort of couch, and filled with dried
fern, which forms the principal piece of furniture in every farm-house
kitchen in the Channel Islands. Then he cut away the boot from my
swollen ankle, with a steady but careful touch, speaking now and then a
word of encouragement, as if I were a child whom he was tending. His
mother stood by, looking on helplessly and in bewilderment, for he had
not had time to explain my accident to her.

But for my arm, which hung helplessly at my side, and gave me
excruciating pain when he touched it, it was quite evident he could do
nothing.

"Is there nobody who could set it?" I asked, strivi