"Winifred!" echoed Villard, jumping from his car. In a second more Sawyer, hastening to alight, called upon Santzi to rush along for a doctor, and to notify the motor police.
Villard, who stood spellbound on hearing the name he adored, soon forced himself into action. Instantly the words that were whispered to him in the early morning hours came to mind. "It is myself, incarnate, that you will marry--You will meet her soon--There will be an accident--You will give assistance."
He saw a man, hatless and bleeding, rushing madly about calling the name Winifred. Villard again took up the cry.
"Winifred!--Winifred!" he shouted, running from point to point amid the wreckage.
Of several persons strewn about the roadside he knew instinctively, when he had stooped over the form of the one he sought. He dropped to his knees and seized her hands, chafing them vigorously to renew suspended animation. He placed his hand upon her brow, and raised an eyelid--then bent over and put his ear to her heart.
"Winifred," he whispered softly. "Wake up, dear child!"
Then jumping to his feet he shouted to her father:
"Here she is, sir--and she's coming back to life! Water, Sawyer--find a thermos bottle! There must be one somewhere in the wreckage."
To Villard all else in the world was naught but this beautiful child woman whose head and body rested against his breast. As if paralyzed her father looked on, mute and despairing.
"Splash some on her cheeks," he commanded of Sawyer, who hastened forward with the bottle from one of the upturned cars.
"More--more--ah--that's the stuff--water! See? She is breathing again, and I doubt that she is very much injured. We'll soon know," he said to himself as he began, ever so gently, to raise her arms, and nether limbs one by one. Then he laid her, full length, upon the grass, and pillowed her head with his motor coat.
"She doesn't cry out--no bones broken--thank God!--just bruised, and shocked by the impact after fall," he explained to the dazed father with quiet gentleness. "Get some cushions out of the wreck and we'll make her comfortable under the shade of a tree."
Almost immediately a man on a motorcycle dashed upon the scene and with difficulty stopped in time. Throwing his machine to one side he ran quickly to the big roadster--"Number 12" had literally run his man to earth. There lay the inanimate form of William Parkins with the pallor of death upon his face, and a bleeding wound well back of his left ear near the occipital bone. His body was pinned beneath his heavy roadster.