“I shall always be devoutly thankful that the child did get out, for before she had even stepped into the house behind the old woman a man whom I had not seen fired his gun at a squirrel close behind us, and in an instant the startled horse dashed away with me, paying no heed to all my efforts to hold him in. The road was up-hill for a little way, but I well remembered that there was a long, steep pitch after that, and I drew the reins with all the strength I had and settled myself into the middle of the seat so I should not be quite so easily thrown out. When we reached the top of the hill the downward pace was terrible. He seemed not to run, but to take great plunging leaps. His very first jump pulled the reins out of my hands, and I crouched down on the floor, grasping the seat and expecting every instant to be thrown out. I suppose I did not spend much time in this way, but it seemed like an hour that I clung there with a dreadful death apparently quite certain, for the road was narrow, with a steep, stony descent on one side. At the bottom of the terrible hill there was a short bit of road as nearly level as any road ever is among those mountains, then a fork, one road taking straight up another hill, the other making a sharp, sudden turn toward a plank bridge that had been injured by late storms and was considered impassable.
“If the horse, whose bounds seemed to be getting a little less impetuous, went straight up the other hill, possibly, hope whispered to me, I might be saved; but if he took that awful turn—I turned sick when I thought of what would come then!
“In those few terrible seconds before we reached the foot of the hill I saw—although I was not conscious till afterward that I saw any thing—the hotel standing boldly out upon its clearing, with people walking and sitting upon its broad piazza, and, just before the bit of level road I was approaching, a little black house, with a group of children playing beneath a tree and a girl hanging a heavy quilt upon a clothes-line. The noise of the wheels made her turn her head. I cannot remember what she did then, but I have been told that she made a dash for the road, and, when my horse came to the spot where to turn was death, she stood at the point of danger, right in the middle of the road, with the dark, wet calico quilt held up in her extended arms. If she had moved it it would have added to the horse’s terror and driven him into a mad bolt at the precipice on the other side of the road, but held as the girl held it it simply made, as she hoped it would, a barrier to keep him from taking the turn.
“My horse’s pace grew less fearful then, even on the level space, and before we reached the top of the steep ascent it had moderated so greatly that two men at the top in a loaded wagon sprang from their seat at sight of my danger and stopped him without much difficulty.”
Mrs. Abbott stopped for a moment, overcome by the recollection of her exciting adventure, while the girls, who had almost forgotten to breathe while they listened, crowded about her with caresses and murmurs of thankfulness that she had been saved.
CHAPTER V.
MARY ANN STUBBS.
“It is very lovely,” said Mrs. Abbott, as the girls were petting and fondling her, “very lovely in you to care so much for my deliverance from peril. I have not been able to tell you half how dreadful my danger was. I seemed to be looking right at death, and a terrible death, too. My heart is full of thankful love whenever I think of God’s goodness to me then. Perhaps my lips did not utter a word; I know I did not scream, but something within me cried out just as the supreme moment of danger was at hand, ‘Lord, save me, save me, save me!’
“Girls,” continued Mrs. Abbott, solemnly, making an effort to recover herself from the strong excitement with which she had spoken the last words, “God heard me out of the depths of my agony; he sent the angel of his deliverance to my help. Do you wonder that gratitude to the girl who risked her life to save mine makes me wish to make her life happier?”
“It was Mary Ann Stubbs,” exclaimed Lily, throwing her arms around Mrs. Abbott’s neck and sobbing, “and I—I—I have been so mean to her when she saved your life!”