CHAPTER V.
“How easy it is to ride horseback! This is perfectly delicious!” cried Molly, exultantly, as she gripped the reins in her little white hands, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of her novel adventure.
A feeling of buoyant delight came to her as she felt herself borne easily and swiftly along on the back of the gently pacing and splendid animal.
“Oh, I did not know what I missed in never learning to ride! I shall get Aunt Thalia to let me have a horse to go out every day now until Louise sends for me,” she resolved, gayly.
Alas! she felicitated herself too soon.
They had not made half the distance to Ferndale, when at a sudden turn of the road some distance ahead, Molly saw a tall, manly figure coming toward her with the inevitable fiery tip of a cigar gleaming through the semi-darkness. At sight of this pedestrian the bay horse, which had been pacing easily and beautifully, uttered a loud whinny of delight, and changed his easy gait for a sudden gallop that took Molly by surprise, and, losing her balance in the saddle, the reins slipped from her hands. Another moment and our luckless heroine went flying over the head of her noble steed and landed ignobly on her face in the dust of the road.
The bay horse stopped perfectly still with wonderful equine intelligence and the pedestrian dropped his cigar and rushed to the rescue.
As he came upon the scene the animal again uttereda whinny of delight and poked his cold nose into the new-comer’s hand.
“What, Hero, old fellow, glad to see me back?” the gentleman said, with a hasty caress on the graceful head.
Then he stooped over the heap of huddled-up humanity in the road.
“What mischief have you done in your haste to bid me welcome?” he continued, lifting Molly’s dark head out of the dust.
A moment’s examination assured him that the fall had either stunned or killed her outright.
“This is dreadful; and whom can it be, anyhow, riding my mother’s favorite bay?”
While he spoke he was carrying her across the road to a little spring bubbling between the rocks and ferns.
He laid her down then on the grass and bathed her face and hands with water.
But Molly lay for many minutes still and speechless, and he began to grow very anxious as well as curious over the girl whose face as seen by the light of the rising moon looked very lovely with its clear-cut, piquant features, round, dimpled chin, and slender black brows and thick, fringed lashes.
The man leaning over her was as handsome in his way as she in hers was lovely. He was tall and stately looking, with a splendid physique, and a noble, high-bred face, large eyes that looked black by night, but by day were blue as the violets of his native hills. His hair was of a chestnut tinge, and lay in luxuriant masses about his temples. It was the face of a man about thirty years old, and the golden brown mustache shaded lips that were strong, and grave, and proud,and perhaps a little stern. In dress and manner he was the perfect gentleman.
“Whomcanshe be? I am quite certain that she belongs to no one in the neighborhood,” he was thinking for at least the twentieth time, when suddenly a sigh heaved Molly’s breast, and the dark eyes opened wide on the face of the stranger.
At first she regarded him in dreamy surprise. Her head lay on his arm, but she did not seem to notice it, only murmured, quaintly, and with an air of relief:
“I thought I was dead!”
“I thought so, too, but I am very happy to find that you are not,” said the stranger in a pleasantly musical voice. “Tell me, do you feel any pain?”
Molly groaned as she half lifted her form from where it rested against him.
“I feel as if all my bones were broken. I fell out of a tree, you know,” she said.
An expression of uneasiness crossed his face.
“It was a horse you fell from—don’t you remember?” he asked.
“It was not a horse, it was a tree. I think I ought to know!” returned belligerent Molly.