“Is she bitten?” he cried, in a voice of agony, and with ashen lips, to the stranger, who stood, gun in hand, over the dead dog. “No; she has not even a scratch; she has merely fainted from fright,” he answered; and throwing down his gun, he took a long pocket-flask filled with brandy from his hunting-pouch, and approached the unconscious girl. He knelt upon the ground beside her and poured a few drops between her lips, though his hands trembled violently from the terrible excitement and anxiety under which he had been laboring. “Go for some water,” he said to his son, who, having heard the report of his father’s fowling-piece, now appeared upon the scene. He darted away like a fawn, and was back in less than three minutes with a pitcherful, which he had seized from the camp, while a frightened crowd followed at his heels. But it was a long time before Star revived. The shock to her nervous system had been a terrible one, and nature seemed loth to resume her sway after it. But at the end of half an hour her chest began to heave, and a slight tinge of color returned to her lips. Ralph Meredith, who hung over her in an agony of suspense and fear, would let no one touch her or come near her, save his sister and Mr. Rosevelt; and he found that it required all the strength of his will to keep him from betraying to the gaping crowd the passionate love he entertained for the senseless girl. Finally, to everybody’s relief, those white lids were unclosed, those beautiful eyes looked up, and a long, shuddering sigh shook her whole frame. “What has happened?” she questioned, with a vacant look. “You are faint, dear. Drink this and you will be better,” Grace Meredith said, gently, while she held a silver cup to her lips. She swallowed the stimulus mechanically, and then began to shiver, as if from the cold. “I remember,” she murmured, all the color fading from her face again, and they feared another season of unconsciousness would follow. “Is he dead?” she asked, a moment after, beginning to rally once more. “Yes; he was killed instantly,” Ralph Meredith returned. “And Josephine—Miss Richards—is she safe?” Everybody looked surprised at this query, for no one had had any idea that that young lady had been in any danger until now. “Yes; Miss Richards is safe,” Mr. Rosevelt answered; but a frown contracted his brow as he began to understand that Star had sacrificed her own safety and endangered her own life to save that of an ungrateful girl. No one had been able to gather from Josephine’s excited and incoherent account anything save that a mad dog had attacked Miss Gladstone in the woods. She said not a word of how the noble girl had come to her rescue, warned her of her danger, and then put into execution a hazardous plan to secure her safety.