He climbed up as hastily as his portly form would permit to the ledge, and bent over a figure, which was nearly motionless. "Bless my soul!" he ejaculated in alarm and surprise. "God bless my soul! Why, it is poor Susan! How on earth did she come here?" As he bent to lift her up she lay like a log in his arms. The doctor however did not waste any time in vain regrets or in exclamations of wonder: he was a medical man, and his first care was to examine the motionless form of the girl, to see how far she was hurt. She had only fainted, he shortly perceived, and he set to work at once to revive her. Thanks to a pocket flask of brandy, which he had fortunately brought with him, he soon contrived to put a little life into the girl; and he was able after a time to raise her up, when she opened her eyes and gave a groan of pain. She apparently did not know where she was or recognise the doctor; she only moaned, "Take me home! Take me home!" One of her arms broken, and a cut on her head; but, otherwise, she had most providentially escaped. She had probably fainted at the time she shrieked out before falling backwards over the cliff. Being thus supine, she could not struggle; so instead of receiving fatal injuries as a man might have done, who attempted to resist his fall she was unhurt, with the exception of a few trifling injuries, which time would soon repair. But she was very much shaken, and the doctor did not know what to do with her, as she could hardly walk, and he was not strong enough to carry her, as he might have done in his earlier days. The place was quite deserted. The doctor could not see a soul, and much as he disliked Frenchmen, he would have been glad to come across then the most "miserable foreign vagabond" who might have been sent on his way; but no one came, and as it was getting darker and darker, and night coming on, the doctor had to pull his wits together. He was a man of action: to wager with possible improbabilities his creed, so he did not hesitate long. While the girl was sobbing and moaning to herself, and crying out in half-incoherent language "Allynne! Allynne!" he lifted her up bodily, and tried to get her home to her own place in the _Rue Montmartre_. But the night was dark, as has been before observed, and the doctor missed the landmarks, which he had so carefully jotted down on the tablets of his memory. He was in the right direction, but when he got to the foot of the street of which he was in search, he lost altogether his _carte du pays_. Just then he saw a _fiacre_, and at the same time he arrived at a sudden determination; what it was, will be presently shown.