Seeing Wade lie there motionless, the lady —

Took off her spectacles, blew her great red nose,
and stiffly drew near.

Spectacles! Nose! No, — the latter feature of
hers had never become acquainted with the former;
and there was as little stiffness as nasal redness
about her.

A fresh start, then, — and this time accuracy!

Appalled by the loud thump of the stranger's
skull upon the chief river of the State of New
York, the lady — it was a young lady whom Wade
had tumbled to avoid — turned, saw a human being
lying motionless, and swept gracefully toward him,
like a Good Samaritan, on the outer edge. It was
not her fault, but her destiny, that she had to be
graceful even under these tragic circumstances.

“Dead!” she thought. “Is he dead?”

The appalling thump had cracked the ice, and

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

she could not know how well the skull was cushioned
inside with brains to resist a blow.

She shuddered, as she swooped about toward
this possible corpse. It might be that he was
killed, and half the fault hers. No wonder her fine
color, shining in the right parts of an admirably
drawn face, all disappeared instantly.

But she evidently was not frightened. She halted,
kneeled, looked curiously at the stranger, and
then proceeded, in a perfectly cool and self-possessed
way, to pick him up.

A solid fellow, heavy to lift in his present lumpish
condition of dead-weight! She had to tug
mightily to get him up into a sitting position.
When he was raised, all the backbone seemed gone
from his spine, and it took the whole force of her
vigorous arms to sustain him.

The effort was enough to account for the return
of her color. It came rushing back splendidly.
Cheeks, forehead, everything but nose, blushed.
The hard work of lifting so much avoirdupois, and
possibly, also, the novelty of supporting so much
handsome fellow, intensified all her hues. Her
eyes — blue, or that shade even more faithful than
blue — deepened; and her pale golden hair grew
several carats — not carrots — brighter.

She was repaid for her active sympathy at once
by discovering that this big, awkward thing was
not a dead, but only a stunned body. It had an
ugly bump and a bleeding cut on its manly skull,
but otherwise was quite an agreeable object to

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

contemplate, and plainly on its “unembarrassed
brow Nature had written `Gentleman.'”

As this young lady had never had a fair, steady
stare at a stunned hero before, she seized her advantage.
She had hitherto been distant with the
other sex. She had no brother. Not one of her
male cousins had ever ventured near enough to
get those cousinly privileges that timid cousins
sigh for and plucky cousins take, if they are worth
taking.

Wade's impressive face, though for the moment
blind as a statue's, also seized its advantage and
stared at her intently, with a pained and pleading
look, new to those resolute features.

Wade was entirely unconscious of the great hit
he had made by his tumble: plump into the arms
of this heroine! There were fellows extant who
would have suffered any imaginable amputation,
any conceivable mauling, any fling from the apex
of anything into the lowest deeps of anywhere,
for the honor he was now enjoying.

But all he knew was that his skull was a beehive
in an uproar, and that one lobe of his brain was
struggling to swarm off. His legs and arms felt as
if they belonged to another man, and a very limp
one at that. A ton of cast-iron seemed to be pressing
his eyelids down, and a trickle of red-hot metal
flowed from his cut forehead.

“I shall have to scream,” thought the lady, after
an instant of anxious waiting, “if he does not revive.
I cannot leave him to go for help.”

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

Not a prude, you see. A prude would have had
cheap scruples about compromising herself by taking
a man in her arms. Not a vulgar person, who
would have required the stranger to be properly
recommended by somebody who came over in the
Mayflower, before she helped him. Not a feeble-minded
damsel, who, if she had not fainted, would
have fled away, gasping and in tears. No timidity
or prudery or underbred doubts about this thorough
creature. She knew she was in her right womanly
place, and she meant to stay there.

But she began to need help, possibly a lancet,
possibly a pocket-pistol, possibly hot blankets, possibly
somebody to knead these lifeless lungs and
pommel this flaccid body, until circulation was restored.

Just as she was making up her mind to scream,
Wade stirred. He began to tingle as if a familiar
of the Inquisition were slapping him all over
with fine-toothed currycombs. He became half
conscious of a woman supporting him. In a stammering
and intoxicated voice he murmured, —

He opened his eyes. It was not his mother; for
she was long since deceased. Nor was this nonmother
kissing the place.

In fact, abashed at the blind eyes suddenly unclosing
so near her, she was on the point of letting
her burden drop. When dead men come to life in

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

such a position, and begin to talk about “kissing
the place,” young ladies, however independent of
conventions, may well grow uneasy.

But the stranger, though alive, was evidently in
a molluscous, invertebrate condition. He could
not sustain himself. She still held him up, a little
more at arm's-length, and all at once the reaction
from extreme anxiety brought a gush of tears to
her eyes.

“Don't cry,” says Wade, vaguely, and still only
half conscious. “I promise never to do so again.”

At this, said with a childlike earnestness, the lady
smiled.

“Don't scalp me,” Wade continued, in the same
tone. “Squaws never scalp.”

He raised his hand to his bleeding forehead.

She laughed outright at his queer plaintive tone
and the new class he had placed her in.

Her laugh and his own movement brought Wade
fully to himself. She perceived that his look was
transferring her from the order of scalping squaws
to her proper place as a beautiful young woman of
the highest civilization, not smeared with vermilion,
but blushing celestial rosy.

“Thank you,” said Wade. “I can sit up now
without assistance.” And he regretted profoundly
that good breeding obliged him to say so.

She withdrew her arms. He rested on the ice, —
posture of the Dying Gladiator. She made an effort
to be cool and distant as usual; but it would
not do. This weak mighty man still interested

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

her. It was still her business to be strength to
him.

He made a feeble attempt to wipe away the drops
of blood from his forehead with his handkerchief.

“Let me be your surgeon!” said she.

She produced her own folded handkerchief, —
M. D. were the initials in the corner, — and neatly
and tenderly turbaned him.

Wade submitted with delight to this treatment.
A tumble with such trimmings was luxury indeed.

“Who would not break his head,” he thought,
“to have these delicate fingers plying about him,
and this pure, noble face so close to his? What
a queenly indifferent manner she has! What a
calm brow! What honest eyes! What a firm
nose! What equable cheeks! What a grand indignant
mouth! Not a bit afraid of me! She
feels that I am a gentleman and will not presume.”

“There!” said she, drawing back. “Is that
comfortable?”

“Luxury!” he ejaculated with fervor.

“I am afraid I am to blame for your terrible fall.”

“No, — my own clumsiness and that oar-blade
are in fault.”

“If you feel well enough to be left alone, I will
skate off and call my friends.”

“Please do not leave me quite yet!” says
Wade, entirely satisfied with the tête-à-tête.

“Ah! here comes Mr. Skerrett round the
Point!” she said, — and sprang up, looking a little
guilty.

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