She looked again, and a cry of joy, so intense that it was near akin to pain, burst from her pallid lips. Torn, bruised, scratched, disheveled, clothing hanging in tatters, the difficult, awkward, evidently painful and toilsome movement, as different as possible from his accustomed free, manly, energetic carriage, it was yet, without doubt, Kenneth himself. Caius bounded toward him with a joyous bark of recognition, and Marian sprang to the ground and rushed with outstretched arms to meet him, crying, "O, Kenneth, Kenneth, is it, can it be you? Oh, I thought--I thought--" The rest was lost in a burst of weeping, as she clasped him close, then, holding him off, gazed shudderingly into his face, so bruised, wan and bloody that she might well have doubted if it were indeed he. "Yes," he gasped, staggering and catching at the fence for support, "I have had a wonderful deliverance. And you, darling? Oh, the Lord be praised that you are here safe and sound!" Their approach had been seen from the house, and mother and servants now came running to ask what had befallen, every face full of agitation and alarm at sight of Kenneth's condition. But seeing that he was half-fainting, the mother stopped all questioning till he could be got into the house, laid upon a bed and his wounds dressed. There were no bones broken, he presently assured her of that, but the jar to the whole system, the bruises and cuts, would confine him to his couch for some days. Great was her astonishment when told whence he had fallen. "How is it possible you can have escaped alive?" she exclaimed, her usually calm face full of emotion; "it seems nothing short of a miracle!" "Yes," he said, with deep gravity, and a far away look in his eyes; "my thought, as I felt myself falling, was that I was going to certain, instant death; but there was a joyful consciousness that all would be well." "But what saved you?" she asked, in almost breathless excitement. "The trees and the sand, joined to my light weight, were my heavenly Father's instruments to that end," he answered with his grave, tender smile. "The bank of the stream just there is a deep bed of soft sand; that is overhung by waterwillows with very thick, very pliant branches; and towering above them, from fifty to seventy feet high, are oaks and other varieties of trees. I must have fallen first into those, and without striking any large branch, from them into the willows, and from them on to the bed of sand. "I was there when I came to myself; how long I had lain there insensible I cannot tell, but it must have been a good while. I had a good deal of difficulty in dragging myself home; could not get to Marian by any shorter route, and thought to send Zeb for her. "Poor child! I was very anxious about you," he added, with an affectionate glance at her, "for I did not know but the Englishman might have carried you off."