[CHAPTER XIV.]
A STRANGE FATE.
I never thought that I should see thine eyelids shut in death,
Thy bright brow cold, thy spirit quenched that glowed and bloomed beneath.
Sumner Lincoln Fairfield.
Poor Kathleen! she had passed through a strange and terrible experience.
On that night when she had been so suddenly choked and robbed by an unseen foe, the young girl had swooned from terror.
That quick relapse into unconsciousness had saved her life.
Thinking her dead, the murderer had relaxed his hold on her throat, and throwing her roughly from him, escaped with his booty in time to board the other train.
Kathleen, by one of those strange psychological conditions sometimes induced by severe mental strain or shock, passed from her swoon into a state of coma or trance. Through the two nights and one day in which she lay thus, her senses seemed to be preternaturally acute, although her bodily faculties were bound in iron bands of inaction.
What was her agony during the two hours when she lay alone in the murky darkness and the snow and rain—what her joy when the voice of her beloved penetrated her senses!