"The d--l!" was old man Sutton's exclamation; not that he really thought the slender little figure perched on the back of the tall horse was the personage mentioned--it was only a habit he had of apostrophizing. The horse had stopped short and was breathing hard, and the prayer for help was frantically repeated by the rider. "Come quick, and help the poor fellow; I've been gone so long from him--oh! _do_ come!" "What poor fellow--and where is he?" asked the old man, in bewilderment. "The stage-driver--and he's lying near the old Mission, with his leg broken. The horses shied in the storm and overturned the stage, and I was the only passenger, and I crept out of it, and the driver couldn't move any more, and told me to unhitch the horses and come this way for help, and--oh! _do_ come now!" She ended her harangue, delivered with flying breath and little attention to rhetoric or inter-punctuation. "And you came those nine miles all alone, gal?" asked the old man. "Oh, I think I must have come a hundred miles," she replied, with a wild look at the faces on the porch and in the open doorway; "and it is so cold!" She drew the dripping garments closer about her, while father and son consulted together, with their eyes only, for a brief moment. Then the old man said she must be taken in, and they must get the wagon ready, and waken Pedro and Martin. Without a word Frank gave a lantern to Johnny, lifted the girl from the horse and carried her into the room, brushing the drenched hair back from her face, when he sat her down, as he would have done a child's. But she pleaded excitedly, "Indeed I cannot stay--let me go back, and you can follow." "So you shall go back, my gal," said Mr. Sutton, "as soon as the wagon is ready. See how she's shivering, mother; get her some hot tea, and give her your fur sack--for she'll go back with us or die." "My fur sack?" repeated the old lady, incredulously; "my best sack--out in this rain!" "Best sack be ----," he shouted, angrily; "I'll throw it in the fire in a minute!" And the best sack quickly made its appearance, in spite of the threat of speedy cremation. The tea was brought by Johnny, hastily drank, and then the girl repeated her wish to move on. Frank's own cloak was thrown over "the best fur sack"--not, I fear, so much from a desire to save this garment as from the wish to keep the shrinking form in it from shivering so painfully.