When Anne Roth came panting up a moment later, having seen the cattle
disappearing and been filled with alarm lest Penelope should have been
frightened by them, he found the two sisters unconscious on the ground,
with their poor protector lying bleeding and exhausted between them, and
whining piteously as he licked his bleeding wounds.

Here was a sight for one man in a lonely spot! For a moment Anne was
bewildered; then, picking up Penelope, who he saw was the most injured,
he carried her with all the speed he could back to his own house.
But he was full of a double dread, for to the most casual eye it was plain
that the child was seriously injured, and the sight of her, bruised,
bleeding, and unconscious could not but be a shock to his mistress.

But Mademoiselle bore the shock well. "Let me attend to her while you and
Laura go to poor Miss Esther and the dear dog," she said promptly; and
Penelope was taken up to her own room, where she undressed her and got her
to bed, and bathed her cuts, while they went out and brought in the other
two.

Esther was in a swoon, but quite uninjured, so they laid her on the couch
in the little sitting-room and administered restoratives, while Guard was
taken to the kitchen to have his wounds bathed and dressed, and Anne
hurried off for a doctor and Miss Ashe, for Penelope's injuries were far
too serious for home dressing. She was bleeding so profusely from the
cuts on her head that there was real cause for alarm; her arm was broken,
and her collar-bone, too, they feared, while her poor body was bruised and
crushed all over.

When Esther came back to consciousness twilight had fallen. She looked
about her for a moment in the dimness, bewildered and incredulous.
That she was in the dear familiar room she loved so well, she felt sure,
yet how came she there? and what had happened? She lay still for a
moment, wondering; then, her head growing confused, she raised herself a
Little and looked again. This time she recognised a figure seated by the
window, but so quiet and drooping she scarcely seemed alive.

For a second or so Esther gazed in sheer bewilderment, then raising
herself still more, she whispered, half-alarmed, half-questioning,
"Mademoiselle, is that you?"

Mademoiselle rose at once. "Are you better, darling?" she said, bending
over and laying a soft hand on her head. Esther noticed that she spoke in
a strange, hushed voice.

"Are you ill, Mademoiselle?" she a