alone like this. Not for an
instant would he forget her if he had strength to creep to her side. He
was dead. He would never let these torturing moments pass without
speaking to her if he had breath to speak.

"Uncle Philip! Philip Alston!" she cried again and again. "Don't you
know me? It's Ruth."

"Here, I'm coming!" a man's voice shouted out of the distance. "Where
are you? Speak again. Let me find you by the sound."

"They have killed him!" she shrieked. "I can't find him in the dark."

She was out of the saddle now, bending down and groping with her
shaking, tender little hands on the torn and trampled earth. A wilder
gust of wind brought the beat of rapidly retreating hoofs to her
strained ears. She sprang up with a new fear and cried it aloud high and
far above the shriek of the wind.

"They are taking him away! Will you never come? Is it you--uncle Philip?
Oh--why--don't you come to me? It's Ruth."

"It is I--Father Orin," said the priest near by.

She did not reply, nor even glance at him, although the cloud curtain
was now suddenly lifted again, and she could see clearly. She did not
notice that all the horsemen had vanished. She saw only the motionless
form of the man she loved lying some distance away. It was plain that he
had pressed the assassins as far from her as he could; that his
outstretched arms had fallen in some supreme effort. The hunting-knife
glittered in the moonlight at a distance from his hand. He must have
fought on with his bare hands after his only weapon had been struck from
his grasp. His eyes were closed, and his face was like the face of the
dead.

Ruth, dropping to the earth beside him, had taken his head on her lap
before the priest could come up and dismount. She did not reply, nor
even hear his alarmed questioning.

"See if he is living, Father," she said. "Here, put your hand on his
heart--here--where my hand is. Make haste. Why are you so slow?" Then
flashing round on him in her impetuous way: "Why don't you say that you
feel his heart beat? Of course you do! Of course he is alive. How could
he be dead--in a moment--a flash--like this! He is so young. He has only
begun to live. And so strong and brave. Oh, so brave, Father! Dear
Father Orin--if you could have seen how fearlessly he stood, between
them and me--waiting for them to come! Only one, too, against so many.
But I wasn't afraid while I could see him. No, not for a moment, even
against them all. And then when it