She was so young to die, and she loved life in spite of the cruel disappointments it had brought her, still hoping for something brighter in that distant future to which youth’s eyes are ever turned; so she dragged herself up to her feet and ran with all her strength a little way, then fell down, panting and exhausted, her wet garments freezing to her limbs, the shoes torn from her tender feet by the rocky road, the salt tears freezing on her cold cheeks.
She rested a few moments, then began to crawl along over the ground, tearing her soft little hands on rocks and thorns till they bled, and sobbing as she went:
“Oh, God, have mercy! Don’t let poor little Eva die of the cold out in the lonesome woods without a friend to close her eyes!”
Oh, the night, how long and terrible it seemed. Though it was past midnight when they had driven her out from home, and she seemed to have been walking hours, and hours, and hours, no welcome rays of daylight glimmered through the dense wooded gloom of the long night. In the distance she heard the tu-whit of the mystic owl, and the almost human scream of the terrible panther, thirsting for prey, and trembled and shuddered with fear of becoming his victim. She moaned to herself that if she lived until to-morrow all her golden hair would be turned white by the agony of these interminable hours. She would be changed into an old woman in a night.
Oh, the terror of the awful darkness and solitude, without one ray of light or welcome sound! If she had possessed a fortune, little Eva would have given it gladly for one sound of a human voice, even though it spoke to her in chiding.
And through all the darkness there was one sight ever before her eyes—the two men lying stark and dead in those crimson pools upon the floor of her dainty little white-hung room, her maiden retreat from all the world. That sight would haunt her till she died, be her years few or many.
“I was not to blame. The sin lies at another’s door. Why did they drive me out like a leper, to perish on the highway?” she moaned, dragging herself on and on, until, finally, she sank down unconscious.
She lay like one dead on the carpet of dead leaves and briery vines. Moments went by unheeded, until at last a dim, gray light filtered through the darkness and the yellowish smoke from the distant fires. The light spread and spread, grew bright, then golden.
She came to herself again with the sunlight slanting through dead, leafless boughs, down into her pallid face, and, opening her dark eyes wide, she sat up and looked around.
She was couched in the pathless woods. She heard the faint whir of the pheasant’s wing, the plaintive call of the partridge, the low sough of the wind in the pine trees, but no human voice mixed with the echoes of woodland life.