It would seem as if a miracle had been wrought, giving back life to the dead.
But Dainty's draught of laudanum had been too small to induce death, and the wholesome bath of rain and the electric elements abroad in the air had combined to rouse her from a stupor that might otherwise have terminated fatally. Life—feeble, and faltering, yet still life—stole back along her veins to her numb heart, and set it beating again.
With a strength almost incredible after the terrible week she had endured, she wandered slowly down the road, obeying blind impulse, not reason; for her mind was yet clouded by delirium, and she had as yet no realization of who she was or where she was.
Her mind was a pitiful blank, and her lips babbled vacant nothings as she dragged herself on and on, further and further away from Ellsworth, and into the lonely woods, unconsciously leaving the beaten track, and pursuing a lonely bridle path that led her into the very heart of the forest.
Now and then, when her strength failed, she would drop down and rest; then start up and wander on again, aimlessly and drearily, until she seemed to be lost in a maze of thick woodland that looked like the haunts of savage creatures and crawling serpents, whose dens were fitly chosen among these jagged gray rocks.
"And when on the earth she sank to sleep,
If slumber her eyelids knew,
She lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh in blistering dew,
And near her the she-wolf stirred the brake,
And the copper snake breathed in her ear."
She came staggering out at last from a great thicket of ferns and found herself near a brawling mountain stream—one of those pellucid trout streams dear to the disciples of gentle Isaak Walton. On its green, sloping banks she sank down to rest, lulled by the low murmur of the waters, and presently the gray shadows of dawn were pierced by the sun's bright rays lighting the solitary wilderness with glory.
Higher and higher mounted the sun, and all the woodland dwellers started abroad, while the mists of the night fled at the warmth of the advancing day; but wearily, wearily, slumbered the exhausted girl, crouching on the grass, with her pallid cheek in the hollow of her little hand, her hair a tangle of glory glinting in the sun, as it shone through the branches of the trees.
Heavily, wearily, she slept on as one too exhausted ever to wake again, and presently the deep forest stillness was broken by the dip of oars in the murmuring stream, while a man's voice cried, eagerly:
"Another speckled beauty for our string, Peters! Ye gods, what a royal breakfast we shall have this morning! Is your wife a good cook, say? For it would be a thousand pities to have these spoiled!"