"Ah, poor little thing!" the girl said, when the message was delivered,
and she put her beast in motion, chattering gayly to Miss Gerald in the
bond of their common orphanhood.

The return was down-hill, and they went back in half the time it had
taken them to come. But even with this speed they were late, and the
twilight was deepening when the last turn of their road brought them in
sight of the new village. There a wild noise of cries for help burst
upon the air, mixed with the shrill sound of maniac gibbering. They saw
a boy running towards the town, and nearer them a man struggling with
another, whom he had caught about the middle, and was dragging towards
the side of the road where it dropped, hundreds of feet, into the gorge
below.

The donkey-girl called out: "Oh, the madman! He is killing the signor!"

Lanfear shouted. The madman flung Gerald to the ground, and fled
shrieking. Miss Gerald had leaped from her seat, and followed Lanfear as
he ran forward to the prostrate form. She did not look at it, but within
a few paces she clutched her hands in her hair, and screamed out: "Oh,
my mother is killed!" and sank, as if sinking down into the earth, in a
swoon.

"No, no; it's all right, Nannie! Look after her, Lanfear! I'm not hurt.
I let myself go in that fellow's hands, and I fell softly. It was a
good thing he didn't drop me over the edge." Gerald gathered himself up
nimbly enough, and lent Lanfear his help with the girl. The situation
explained itself, almost without his incoherent additions, to the effect
that he had become anxious, and had started out with the boy for a
guide, to meet them, and had met the lunatic, who suddenly attacked him.