And the night rode over the mountains with mysterious speed. It seemed
to her frantic brain that the gap between crimson sunset and pallid
twilight could have been spanned by a scant five minutes. And now,
when she found herself at the foot of the last slope, it was the
utter dark, and above her head the white stars were rushing past the
treetops. The slope was killing the mare. She fell from her labored
gallop to a trot, from the trot to a shambling jog, and then to a
walk. And all the time Marianne found herself listening with desperate
intensity for the report of a gun out of the woods ahead!
She threw herself out of the saddle, cast hardly a glance at the
drooping figure of the bay, and ran forward on foot, stumbling in the
dark over fallen branches, slipping more than once and dropping flat
on her face as her feet shot back without foothold from the pine
needles. But she picked herself up again and flung herself at her work
with a frantic determination.
Through the trees, filtered by the branches, she saw a light. But
when she came to the edge of the clearing she made out that the
illumination came from a fire, not a lantern. The interior of the
cabin was awash with shadows, and across the open doorway of the hut
the monstrous and obscure outline of a standing man wavered to and
fro.
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