alive. 'I am afraid it must be giving you pain,' she said,
with a pretty, anxious concern in her eyes as she spoke; and Mark
protested that the pain was nothing--which was the exact truth,
although he had no intention of being taken literally.

They had gone down the embankment again and were slowly crossing the
dim field in which they had first taken refuge. No one was in sight,
the other passengers being still engaged in comparing notes or
browbeating the unhappy guards above; and as Mark glanced at his
companion he saw that her thoughts had ceased to busy themselves about
him, while her eyes were trying to pierce the gloom which surrounded
her.

'I was looking for my little sister,' she exclaimed, answering the
question in his eyes. 'She ran off with the dog you brought back to
her, and it is so easy to lose oneself here. I must find out where she
is--oh, you are ill!' she broke off suddenly, as Mark staggered and
half fell.

'Only a slight giddiness,' he said; 'if--if I could sit down somewhere
for a moment--is that a stile over there?'

'It looks like one. Can you get so far without help?' she said
compassionately. 'Will you lean on me?'

He seemed to her like some young knight who had been wounded, as it
were, in her cause, and deserved all the care she could give him.

'If you will be so very good,' said Mark. He felt himself a humbug,
for he could have leaped the stile with ease at that very moment. He
had very little excuse for practising in this way on her womanly
sympathy, except that he dreaded to lose her just yet, and found such
a subtle intoxication in being tended like this by a girl from whom an
hour ago he had scarcely hoped to win another careless glance; if he
exaggerated his symptoms, as it is to be feared he did, there may be
some who will forgive him under the circumstances.

So he allowed Mabel to guide him to the stile, and sat down on one of
its rotten cross-planks while she poured _eau-de-Cologne_ or some
essence of the kind on a handkerchief, and ordered him to bathe his
forehead with it. They seemed isolated there together on the patch of
hoary grass by a narrow black ditch half hidden in rank weeds, which
alone could be distinguished in the prevailing yellowish whiteness,
and Mark desired nothing better at that moment.

'I wonder,' said Mabel, 'if there's a doctor amongst the passengers.
There must be, I should think. I am sure you ought to see one. Let me
see if I can find one a