as it seemed by
instinct, almost as much as by the vague direction of the moaning call,
he ploughed his way through brush and briar, on rescue bent.

All at once he stopped short in his tracks, wild-eyed, a stammering
exclamation on his lips.

"A woman!" he cried.

True. There, lying as though violently flung, a woman was half-crouched,
half-prone behind the roots of a huge maple that leaned out far above a
sheer declivity.

He saw torn clothing, through the foliage; a white hand, out-stretched
and bleeding; a mass of golden-coppery hair that lay dishevelled on the
bed of moss and last autumn's leaves.

"A woman! Dying?" he thought, with a sudden stab of pity in his heart.

Then, forcing his way along, he reached her, and fell upon his knees at
her side.

"Not dead! Not dying! Thank God!" he exclaimed. One glance showed him
she would live. Though an ugly gash upon her forehead had bathed her
face in blood, and though he knew not but bones were broken, he
recognized the fact that she was now returning, fast, to consciousness.

Already she had opened her eyes--wild eyes, understanding nothing--and
was staring up at him in dazed, blank terror. Then one hand came up to
her face; and, even as he lifted her in both his powerful arms, she
began to sob hysterically.

He knew the value of that weeping, and made no attempt to stop it. The
overwrought nerves, he understood, must find some outlet. Asking no
question, speaking no word--for Gabriel was a man of action, not
speech--he gathered her up as though she had been a child. A tall woman,
she; almost as tall as he himself, and proportioned like a Venus. Yet to
him her weight was nothing.

Sure-footed, now, and bursting through the brambles with fine energy, he
carried her to the gap in the wall, up through it, and so to the roadway
itself.

"Where--where am I?" the woman cried incoherently. "O--what--where--?"

"You're all right!" he exclaimed. "Just a little accident, that's all.
Don't worry! I'll take care of you. Just keep quiet, now, and don't
think of anything. You'll be all right, in no time!"

But she still wept and cried out to know where she might be and what had
happened. Obviously, Gabriel saw, her reason had not yet fully returned.
His first aim must be to bathe her wound, find out what damage had been
done, and keeping her quiet, try to get help.

Swiftly he thought. Here he and the woman were, miles from any
settlement or house, nearly in the mid