"
"No, he did not do that," said Betty, with simple finality. "A sheep
ranch is not amusing----" She stopped short and stood still for a
moment. They had been walking down the avenue, and she stopped because
her eyes had been caught by a figure half sitting, half lying in the
middle of the road, a prostrate bicycle near it. It was the figure of
a cheaply dressed young man, who, as she looked, seemed to make an
ineffectual effort to rise.
"Is that man ill?" she exclaimed. "I think he must be." They went
towards him at once, and when they reached him he lifted a dazed white
face, down which a stream of blood was trickling from a cut on his
forehead. He was, in fact, very white indeed, and did not seem to know
what he was doing.
"I am afraid you are hurt," Betty said, and as she spoke the rest of
the party joined them. The young man vacantly smiled, and making an
unconscious-looking pass across his face with his hand, smeared the
blood over his features painfully. Betty kneeled down, and drawing out
her handkerchief, lightly wiped the gruesome smears away. Lord Westholt
saw what had happened, having given a look at the bicycle.
"His chain broke as he was coming down the incline, and as he fell he
got a nasty knock on this stone," touching with his foot a rather large
one, which had evidently fallen from some cartload of building material.
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