"Did the fall kill the horse?" Amy asked, with a little quiver in her voice, of pity for the poor beast. "No; I thought it best to cut an artery for him. Poor boy! He floundered terribly before he went down." "What threw him?" "Something in the way of a branch or a piece of timber. Lucky it happened where it did," he added. "I couldn't have gone far looking for shelter." "Poor old nag!" said Amy. Then, perceiving that she had not been altogether polite: "Aren't you nearly frozen?" she asked. "No, it's very snug in here. Some other tramp must have been here before me, and got these leaves together. There's lots of warmth in them." By this time Stephen had crawled out from among the oak-leaves and, having got himself into the doctor's fur-lined coat, stood on one foot, leaning heavily against the door-frame. "A splendid night, isn't it?" he remarked in a conversational tone. Amy, who was just leading Sunbeam up to the doorway, glanced at the young man, standing there in the bright moonlight,--at his sensitive, intelligent face, his finely-modelled head and brow,--and somehow she felt reinstated with herself. She had been fatally wrong in making choice so lightly, but at least the choice was, in itself, nothing to be ashamed of! As she helped Stephen in his painful transit to the saddle, she wondered if she were really a heartless person to take comfort in such a thought. But, in truth, since she had come to question the genuineness of her own part in their relation, she had lost faith in his share as well. There must have been something wrong about it from the beginning, and certainly, she reasoned, if she had lost interest in so admirable a being as he, it was not to be expected that he would be more constant to a trifling sort of person like herself. There was only a little awkwardness to be got over at first, but sooner or later he would bless her for his escape. Stephen, meanwhile, was submitting to all her arrangements with neither protest nor suggestion. She had undertaken to rescue him, and she must do it in her own way. If he hated to see her ploughing through the snow by the side of the horse, he made no sign. If he would rather have been left to his fate than to have subjected her to exposure and fatigue, he was too wise to say so. Her wilfulness had been so thoroughly demonstrated in the course of that day that he merely observed her with an appreciation half amused, half admiring. "There is a house just beyond the gate where we can go," she said; and then she did not speak again for many minutes. As for her companion, he seemed inclined at first to be as taciturn as she. Whether or not he was suffering agony from his foot, she had no means of knowing, nor could she guess how he interpreted her own action. At last he broke the silence.