But Molly lay for many minutes still and speechless, and he began to grow very anxious as well as curious over the girl whose face as seen by the light of the rising moon looked very lovely with its clear-cut, piquant features, round, dimpled chin, and slender black brows and thick, fringed lashes. The man leaning over her was as handsome in his way as she in hers was lovely. He was tall and stately looking, with a splendid physique, and a noble, high-bred face, large eyes that looked black by night, but by day were blue as the violets of his native hills. His hair was of a chestnut tinge, and lay in luxuriant masses about his temples. It was the face of a man about thirty years old, and the golden brown mustache shaded lips that were strong, and grave, and proud, and perhaps a little stern. In dress and manner he was the perfect gentleman. “Whom _can_ she be? I am quite certain that she belongs to no one in the neighborhood,” he was thinking for at least the twentieth time, when suddenly a sigh heaved Molly’s breast, and the dark eyes opened wide on the face of the stranger. At first she regarded him in dreamy surprise. Her head lay on his arm, but she did not seem to notice it, only murmured, quaintly, and with an air of relief: “I thought I was dead!” “I thought so, too, but I am very happy to find that you are not,” said the stranger in a pleasantly musical voice. “Tell me, do you feel any pain?” Molly groaned as she half lifted her form from where it rested against him. “I feel as if all my bones were broken. I fell out of a tree, you know,” she said. An expression of uneasiness crossed his face. “It was a horse you fell from--don’t you remember?” he asked. “It was not a horse, it was a tree. I think I ought to know!” returned belligerent Molly. CHAPTER VI. The stranger regarded Molly’s saucy rejoinder as the effect of an injury done to her brain by her fall from the horse, and said to himself, pityingly: “She evidently struck upon her head and the shock has disordered her brain, but I trust the affliction will prove but momentary.” She was sitting upright now regarding him with vexed, dark eyes when he said, smilingly: “Since you dispute my assertion permit me to prove it. Look yonder!” Molly turned her head and saw the handsome bay horse standing still in the road as if conscious of his misdemeanor. Her memory came quickly back. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You remember?” he rejoined. “Yes.” Her face and eyes looked very arch and saucy as she continued: “I suppose you take me for an escaped lunatic?” “Oh, no,” with a provoking smile on the handsome lips, “only a very giddy girl whose memory was temporarily obscured by her fall.” “And you don’t like giddy girls?” Molly interrogated, with a decisive pout. “Not--usually,” he returned with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. Molly sprang to her feet with considerable agility, considering that she had declared she felt as if all her bones were broken.