There, in the distance, I saw her in the rain, running along the road. My first impulse was to follow her and run her down. But luckily I considered the effect this might have in increasing her terror, and stopped. She was soon out of sight. I wandered about the road calling her name, and calling on Heaven to have a little pity—a little mercy.
III
I decided to return to the house, but found that I had lost my way in the obscurity and pelting rain. For hours I wandered about, without the slightest clue as to where I was. I was literally soaked to the skin. Several times I fell into holes in a morass, and was up to my hips in moss and mud and water. Then I began to call out for assistance till I was hoarse. I might as well have called out on an uninhabited island.
The night wore on, and the darkness grew so intense that I could scarcely see my hand when I held it up. Every star in the heavens was hid away as by a thick-pall. The darkness was positively benumbing to the faculties, and added, if possible, to the misery I was in on account of Winifred. Suddenly my progress was arrested. I had fallen violently against something. A human body, a woman! I thrust out my hand and seized a woman's damp arm.
'Winifred,' I cried, 'it's Henry.'
'I thought as much.' said the voice of the Gypsy girl I had met at the wayside inn, and she seized me by the throat with a fearful grip. 'You've been to the cottage and skeared her away, and now she's seed you there she'll never come back; she'll wander about the hills till she drops down dead, or falls over the brinks.'
'O God!' I cried, as I struggled away from her. 'Winifred! Winifred!
There was silence between us then.
'You seem mighty fond on her, young man,' said the Gypsy at length, in a softened voice, 'and you don't strike out at me for grabbin' your throat.'
'Winifred! Winifred!' I said, as I thought of her on the hills on a night like this.