't be far now, darling, beloved, my
precious!"

He grew too faint to understand her words, but her will toward the last
carried him on, step by step, she staring desperately at the skyline,
looking for the cornfield that was to be her landmark.--Could they have
passed it? Surely they had not come so long a way as this?

Suddenly the thought occurred to her that in starting back they might
have entered the wrong ravine. There must be many such shallow fissures
on the mountain-side. She heard near at hand the trickling of a spring,
and stopped aghast. They had passed no spring on the way out. She was
too thoroughly country-bred not to have taken note of running water
instinctively, as animals do.

"Lost!" she whispered to herself; lost in wild country, between midnight
and dawn, with a wounded man on her hands and--no stockings on! The
choking giggle she gave was more than half hysteria.

Then, without a word, Channing pitched forward on his face.

That steadied her. In a moment she had brought water in her cupped hands
from that providential spring, had found his pocket-knife, ripped up his
trousers-leg, and bandaged the wound as coolly as Jemima herself might
have done it, though the sight of the blood nauseated her. She bathed
his face with a wet handkerchief, but his eyelids merely fluttered once
and were still again. In a panic she lifted his head to her bosom,
trying to warm his cheeks; kissed him on the lips again and again,
violently, begging him to wake and speak to her. It is a pity that the
collector of impressions was unable to appreciate these manoeuvers.

"What shall I do? What _shall_ I do?" she moaned.

He had bade her leave him and run for help--but did she dare? Even as
she considered it, there was a rustling in the underbrush, and
startlingly near at hand sounded the eerie cry that had frightened her
earlier in the night. It did not frighten her now, oddly enough. She
regretted the pistol she had left in the cabin. Her hand tightened on
the pocket-knife, however, and she placed herself between Channing and
the direction of the sound.

"Go away! Get out of this! Scat!" she said firmly, flourishing her
lantern.

For a tense moment she waited; but the cry was not repeated. It had put
out of the question, however, any thought of leaving Channing there
defenseless. There were wild-cats in these mountains, she knew,
rattlesnakes, too, possibly bears; and even the foxes that barked far
away at inter