Black Smith looked at her warily. He rather admired this finesse and he had no fear that she would go away.
“The mountain people keep their word,” said he. “You set on that rock an’ I’ll bring him an’ others.” Suddenly he grinned. “If you ain’t here, of course you know what happens to your baby boy. An’ don’t you come after me!”
“I shan’t come after you,” promised Elizabeth.
Once Black Smith stopped and looked back at her. Then he went on. Elizabeth could not see that he followed any road.
When he was out of sight she hid her face for a moment in her hands; then she looked up.
“It will be a little while until they come back,” said she to herself. “Then they will try to catch me. They will think I have gone down to the house and they will hunt and by that time—”
She rose and looked down the side of the mountain.
“I had old Joe to lead the other day,” said she. “And I had some respect for my bones and my clothes and I went round obstacles instead of going over them. Now—”
She looked back over her shoulder. The woods had closed absolutely behind Black Smith. She believed that the settlement of the mountain people must be some distance away, else sounds would have penetrated to her ears. It was a desperate chance, but she took it. She started recklessly, not back to the comparatively open ground, but in a direct line downward. She fell and she picked herself up; she caught her dress in briars and pulled it loose without any mercy on the cloth or without any care for the appearance which she would soon present. She stopped but once, and then merely to listen. There was no sound in the woods of any pursuit, there was scarcely a song of a bird. Again she plunged on. She did not think of John Baring, she scarcely thought of Herbert. She was a desperate creature, who forgets all but the goal, even the reason for the race.
After a while she stopped again, panting. Her hair had come unfastened and she braided it as she waited. Then she listened intently, not now in terror for sign of pursuit, but in hope of another sound. She had descended a long distance and she had kept well to the left. She should hear before long an automobile horn blown warningly on the long descent, or the chug, chug of a machine climbing the hill.