r,
Mad Ruth went faster. The gorge measured a scant fifty feet between
them and the girl's alert senses told her that already Ruth was on a
level with her. Ruth was winning in the desperate race. She knew her
way down so perfectly, her heart was so filled with madness, that
danger was nothing to her.

Down and down climbed Judith, caution wedded to haste, as she told
herself that she had a chance yet, that that chance must not be tossed
away in a fall, though it were but a few feet. She must have no
sprained ankle if she meant to see the sun rise to-morrow.

The flush had brightened in the sky where the moon was so near the
ridge. The moon, too, had joined in the race; with one quick glance
toward it, Judith again discarded caution for haste. She must get down
into the floor of the canon before the moonlight did; she must be
running before its radiance showed her out to Quinnion and Ruth.

Her hands were cut and bleeding, her heart was beating wildly, already
her body was sore and bruised. But these things she did not know. She
only knew that Quinnion was still coming on above her, and coming more
swiftly now, quite as swiftly as she herself moved, since his feet,
too, were in the better trail; that Mad Ruth had completed the descent
across the chasm and by now must be crossing the stream upon some
fallen log or rude bridge; that one minute more, or perhaps two, would
decide her fate.

She could see the stream, glinting palely in the starlight. It seemed
very near; its thunder filled her ears. Down she went and down, down
until at last she was not ten feet above its surface, with a strip of
gently sloping bank just under her. She stooped, took firm hold upon a
knob of boulder, prepared to swing down and drop to the bottom. And,
as she stooped, she heard a little whining moan just under her and
straightened up, tense and terrified. Mad Ruth was there before her.
Mad Ruth was waiting.

XXVII

ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS

And Quinnion was coming on. She was trapped, caught between the two of
them. She heard Quinnion laugh again; he, too, had heard Ruth.

"Oh, God help me!" whispered Judith. "God help me now!"

There was no time to hesitate. If she stood here, Quinnion would in a
moment wrap his arms about her; if she dropped down, she would be in
the frenzied clutch of Mad Ruth.

A second she crouched, peering down into the gloom below her, seeking
to make out the form of the mad woman. The