She walked on, however, through the wood; and just when she was emerging from the thicker part into the clumps and scattered trees, she saw a stranger before her, leaning against the stump of an old hawthorn, and seeming to suffer pain. He was young, handsome, well-dressed, and there was a gun lying at his feet. But as Emily drew nearer, she saw blood slowly trickling from his arm, and falling on the gray sand of the path. She was not one to suffer shyness to curb humanity; and she exclaimed at once, with a look of alarm, "I am afraid you are hurt, sir. Had you not better come up to the house?" The young man looked at her, fainted, and answered in a low tone, "The gun has gone off, caught by a branch, and has shattered my arm. I thought I could reach the cottage by the park gates, but I feel faint." "Stay, stay a moment," cried Emily, "I will run to the hall and bring assistance--people to assist you upon a carriage." "No, no!" answered the stranger quickly, "I cannot go there--I will not go there! The cottage is nearer," he continued more calmly; "I think with a little help I could reach it, if I could staunch the blood." "Let me try," exclaimed Emily; and with ready zeal, she tied her handkerchief round his arm, not without a shaking hand indeed, but with firmness and some skill. "Now lean upon me," she said, when she had done; "the cottage is indeed nearer, but you would have better tendance if you could reach the hall." "No, no, the cottage," replied the stranger, "I shall do well there." The cottage was perhaps two hundred yards nearer to the spot on which they stood than the hall; but there was an eagerness about the young man's refusal to go to the latter, which Emily remarked. Suspicion indeed was alive to her mind; but those were days when laws concerning game, which have every year been becoming less and less strict, were hardly less severe than in the time of William Rufus. Every day, in the country life which she led, she heard some tale of poaching or its punishment. The stranger had a gun with him; she had found him in her father's park; he was unwilling even in suffering and need of help to go up to the hall for succor; and she could not but fancy that for some frolic, perhaps some jest, or some wild whim, he had been trespassing upon the manor in pursuit of game. That he was an ordinary poacher she could not suppose; his dress, his appearance forbade such a supposition. But there was something more. In the young man's face--more in its expression than its features perhaps--more in certain marking lines and sudden glances than in the general whole--there was something familiar to her--something that seemed akin to her. He was handsomer than her father; of a more perfect though less lofty character of beauty; and yet there was a strange likeness, not constant, but flashing occasionally upon her brow, in what, when, she could hardly determine.