st on some
dead or dying animal, they were stalking the girl, silent, shadowy,
evil, and maybe dangerous. She saw them too--and with another scream she
plunged on through the knee-high grass, fell splashing into the icy
water of the creek, and I lost sight of her.

My first thought was that she was in danger of drowning, notwithstanding
the littleness of the brook; and I ran to the point from which I had
heard her plunge into the water, expecting to have to draw her out on
the bank; but I found only a place where the grass was wallowed down as
she had crawled out, and lying on the ground was the satchel she had
been carrying. Dark as it was I could see her trail through the grass as
she had made her way on; and I followed it with her sachel in my hand,
with some foolish notion of opening a conversation with her by giving it
back to her.

A short distance farther, on the upland, were my four cows, tied head
and foot so they could graze, lying down to rest; and staggering on
toward them went the woman's form, zigzagging in bewilderment. She came
all at once upon the dozing cows, which suddenly gathered themselves
together in fright, hampered by their hobbling ropes, and one of them
sent forth that dreadful bellow of a scared cow, worse than a lion's
roar. The woman uttered another piercing cry, louder and shriller than
any she had given yet; she turned and ran back to me, saw my dark form
before her, and fell in a heap in the grass, helpless, unnerved,
quivering, quite done for.

"Don't be afraid," said I; "I won't let them hurt you--I won't let
anything hurt you!"

I didn't go very near her at first, and I did not touch her. I stood
there repeating that the wolves would not hurt her, that it was only a
gentle cow which had made that awful noise, that I was only a boy on my
way to my farm, and not afraid of wolves at all, or of anything else. I
kept repeating these simple words of reassurance over and over, standing
maybe a rod from her; and from that distance stepping closer and closer
until I stood over her, and found that she was moaning and catching her
breath, her face in her arms, stretched out on the cold ground, wet and
miserable, all alone on the boundless prairie except for a foolish boy
who did not know what to do with her or with himself, but was repeating
the promise that he would not let anything hurt her. She has told me
since that if I had touched her she would have died. It was a long time
before she