She never knew why the scream which rose in her throat did not pass her lips. Her terror was unspeakable, for she had heard no advance; indeed, there was too much noise about her for that. But it was the silent terror of despair, for she thought it was the man from whom she had made this great effort at escape. But he soon proved to her he was not. It was just the driver of the stagecoach, returned to see what had become of her. He had feared to find her stricken down in the road, and when he saw her clinging alone and in a maddened way to this tree, he made no bones of speaking to her with all necessary plainness.
"I asked you if it was Missus Brown you had come to see," he called to her through the din. "And you wouldn't answer."
"Why should I?" she shouted back. "Why do you speak like that? Has anything happened to her?"
"Don't you know?"
"No, no—she was well when I heard from her last, and expecting me, or so she wrote. Is she—she—"
"Dead, missus. We buried her last Tuesday. I'm sorry, but—"
Why finish? She was lying out before him, straight and stark in the road. A bolt of lightning which at that moment tore its way through the heavens brought into startling view her face, white with distraction, framed in a mass of iron-gray locks released by her fall.
"Good heaven!" burst from the lips of the frightened man as he stooped to lift her. "What am I going to do now?"
The thunder answered him, or rather it robbed him for the moment of all thought. Peal after peal rattled over the neighboring peaks, rocking the air on the uplands and filling his soul with dismay. But when quiet had come again, hope returned with it. She was not only standing upright but was crying in his ear:
"Can I get into the house? If I could stay there to-night, I could go back to-morrow."