Presently a horror seized me that she was dead, and I shook her pretty roughly by the shoulder. 

 “Oh,” she cried, with a whimper, “don’t!” 

 I was so rejoiced at this evidence of life that I gave a whoop. Then I bent over her. 

 “It’s all right, girl,” I said; “you’re safe; I saved you.” 

 Her lips were moving again and I stopped to listen. “What did he want to drown me for?” she whispered. 

 She was thinking of my brother, not of me. For a flash her eyes opened, violet, like lightning, and glanced up at him standing above; then they closed again. 

 “Come,” I said, roughly; “if you can talk, you can get up.” 

 The girl struggled into a sitting posture and then rose to her feet. She was tall, almost as tall as I was, and about my age, I should think. Her dress, so far as one could judge, it being sopped with water, was a poor patched affair, and rough country shoes were on her feet. 

 “Take me somewhere, where I can dry,” she said, imperiously. “Don’t let him come—he needn’t follow.” 

 “He’s my brother,” I said. 

 “I don’t care. He wanted to drown me; he didn’t know I can’t die by water.” 

 “Can’t you?” I said. 

 “Of course not. I’m a changeling!” 

 She said it with a childish seriousness that confounded me. 

 “What made you one?” I asked. 

 “The fairies,” she said, “and that’s why I’m here.” 

 I was too bewildered to pursue the subject further. 

 “How did you fall in there?” I asked. 

 Prev. P 15/311 next