"If she can clear that, I can, bad rider as I
am!" and burying his spurs deep in the sides of his horse, he pressed
on while Maggie held her breath in fear, for she knew that without
practice no one could do what she had done.
There was a partially downward plunge--a fierce struggle on the
shelving bank, where the animal had struck a few feet from the
top--then the steed stood panting on terra firma, while a piercing
shriek broke the deep silence of the wood, and Maggie's cheeks
blanched to a marble hue. The rider, either from dizziness or fear,
had fallen at the moment the horse first struck the bank, and from the
ravine below there came no sound to tell if yet he lived.
"He's dead; he's dead!" cried Maggie. "'Twas my own foolishness which
killed him," and springing from Gritty's back she gathered up her long
riding skirt and glided swiftly down the bank, until she came to a
wide, projecting rock, where the stranger lay, motionless and still,
his white face upturned to the sunlight, which came stealing down
through the overhanging boughs. In an instant she was at his side, and
his head was resting on her lap, while her trembling fingers parted
back from his pale brow the damp mass of curling hair.
"The fall alone would not kill him," she said, as her eye measured the
distance, and then she looked anxiously round for water with which to
bathe his face.
But water there was none, save in the stream below, whose murmuring
flow fell mockingly on her ears, for it seemed to say she could not
reach it.
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