There was nothing for it but to wait till morning. She knew that by some mischance she had wandered right in among the quagmire and, as she saw the will-o'-the-wisps burn here and there, she wondered that she had not been sucked down to death. She saw the glitter of her own footsteps as the night darkened, but thought they were more witch-lights shining to lure her to her doom.
Numbed with cold, frightened to move, her teeth began to chatter, and her limbs shook until they became even too cold for that sign of life. She sank into a kind of stupor, from which she started at times, thinking that she heard footsteps creeping nearer. But it was only the marsh gas escaping with a sound like a low chuckle. She had no means of guessing the time. Often she thought that the night must be nearly past; it had lasted so long already. When the faintest light crept over the blackness of the sky, she hailed it as the coming of day, but it was only the moon rising behind the clouds.
After that followed a period of utter prostration, in which she saw and heard nothing. She was only conscious of an ever-present horror, which did not seem to have any outward source—she had lost all knowledge of the witch-lights and the marsh.
In this state of stupor Barbara found her.
"Lucy, Lucy," she said, lifting the girl in her arms, and though tears came hardly to her, she sobbed with thankfulness.
Lucy was roused at the sound.
"Save me, save me," she cried.
"You're all right," Barbara replied. "See, I'll carry you through the mire, and then we'll jog along home. Great-granny will think we're both lost, so long out at this time o' year."
"It's nearly morning, isn't it?" asked the girl, clinging to her sister with both hands.
"Bless the bairn, no; not more than ten, at the latest."