“Loosen her dress,” some one suggested. They loosened it and she breathed easier, but did not recover and her face was growing purple when the sound of horses’ hoofs was heard and Tom Hardy came leisurely galloping round the curve in the road on the bay mare Inez had driven the previous day. “What is this? Another hold up?” he said, dismounting quickly and joining the excited group, each one of which began to narrate the particulars in his and her own way. To those nearest to her Fanny said in a low tone, “He is her lover, and the man who saved the other coach as she has saved us.” It scarcely took an instant for this to become known to all, and Tom was at once nearly as much an object of interest as Inez, and a way was made for him to go to her. “Why, it is Inez! How came she here?” he asked in a perfectly steady voice, but his face was white and his hands shook as he knelt by the still unconscious girl, calling her name and rubbing her cold face. At the sound of his voice she opened her eyes and looked at him with an expression of loathing and despair. “Oh, Tom, Tom,” she cried, and the anguish in her voice haunted Tom to his dying day. “I am here, Inez,” he said, very tenderly. “What can I do for you?” She made no reply, but looked up at Fanny as if asking what she knew or suspected. Fanny suspected nothing, and her tears fell fast and hot upon Inez’s face, which she kissed again and again until a faint color came back to it; the heart beats were less rapid, and she tried to get up. Every one was ready to help her, Tom with the rest, but she motioned them all aside, and standing erect said with an effort to smile, “I have made quite a scene. My strength gave out at last. I am all right now. What became of my hat?” Three or four hurried to bring it to her, while Tom said to Fanny, “Where is yours?” It had fallen off in her excitement and lay at some distance from her where it had been stepped on two or three times and badly crushed. Tom picked it up, brushed it very carefully, straightened it as well as he could and then put it on Fanny’s head, saying, as he did so, “I think it is all right.” He seemed much more cheerful than at first, and patted Nero on the head, saying, “You here, too? I wonder you did not go after the ruffian.” “He did,” Fanny explained, “and knocked him down and would have torn him to pieces if Inez had not called him off.” “Why did she do that? She might have let him hold the villain till he was captured. There are surely enough men here to have secured him,” Tom said, speaking so low that Inez did not hear him. She was leaning against a tree, with Nero at her side. He had seemed suspicious of Tom and declining his advances had gone to Inez, looking at her inquiringly as if asking the cause of the commotion.