Here was fresh food for wifely alarm. Herne had never met her husband, yet the latter's name would make known his relationship to herself. She shuddered over the possibilities that might result from their sojourn together—far from aid—in those wild mountains, and made herself wretched for a week in consequence.
Meanwhile the transient fine weather passed; the rains once more descended, and the peaks of Nantahalah were invisible for days amid a whirl of vapor. The boom of the river, the grinding of forest limbs, the shriek of the wind, made life unusually dreary at the camp. She lay awake one night when the elements were apparently doing their worst. Her husband was still absent—perhaps alone with a possible maniac, raving over the memory of fancied wrongs.
Finally another sound mingled with and at last overmastered all others—something between a crash and a roar, interblended with sullen jars and grindings. Near and nearer it came. She sprang to the tent-floor and found her feet in the water. The darkness was intense. What could be the matter? Fear overcame her resolution and she shrieked aloud.
A man bearing a lantern burst into the tent with a hoarse cry. Its gleams showed her Herne the Hunter, drenched, draggled, a ghastly cut across his face, with the blood streaming down, his long hair flying, and in his eyes a fierce flame.
“I feared I would not find you,” he shouted, for the roar without was now appalling. “It is a cloud-burst above. In five minutes this hollow will be fathoms deep. The tents lower down are already gone. Come!”
He had seized and was bearing her out.
“Save—alarm the others!” she cried.
“You first—Alice.”
In that dread moment she detected the hopelessness with which he called her thus, as though such recognition was wrung from his lips by the pain he hugged, even while it rended him.
“My husband?” she gasped, growing faint over the thought of his possible peril—or death.