Dorothy Dale lay there alone, unconscious!

Trundling along the narrow roadway, old Josiah Hobbs and his wife,
Samanthy, rode in their farm wagon. They had been to town with berries
and in the back of the covered vehicle the empty crates told quite as
plainly as the contented smile on the wrinkled faces of the couple,
that berries were in demand that morning, and that the Hobbs' kind had
met a ready market.

Near the elbow in the lower road, at the foot of the precipice, where
lay so still the form of pretty Dorothy Dale, the old horse slowed up.
Mrs. Hobbs saw the girl lying by the water's edge.

"Mercy on us, Josiah!" she cried. "It's a girl!"

"Sure as you live!" replied the old man, giving the reins a jerk.
"What can have happened to the little one?"

"Pray to goodness she ain't dead!" went on Samanthy. "Let me get to
her!" and before her husband could straighten his cramped limbs, she
had crawled out, and was beside Dorothy.

"Is she?" asked Josiah, hesitating.

"She is," replied the wife. The pair seemed to define each other's
meaning in spite of the vagueness of their words.

"But she's awful weakish," whispered the wife. "We got to get her
somewhere."