CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE FLIGHT

Whence is that knocking! How is it with me, when every noise appals me. —Shakespeare.

Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread. * * * * * * Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. —Coleridge.

The precious moments which Kate had lost, first by falling asleep, and afterwards through the watchfulness of the hound, stimulated her now to the utmost speed of which she was capable. Running until she was forced to pause for breath, then pausing an instant to listen, now walking at her utmost pace, then running again as soon as she had recovered herself, she reached the bridge of which the child had spoken, in a period of time incredibly short, and only to be accounted for by the terror with which the fear of death or dishonor winged her feet.

At this point she was compelled to come to a full stop, and remain for awhile in perplexed thought, uncertain which way to go. In vain she tried to remember which road the child had told her to take. As she stood there, hesitating, her fears received fresh stimulants. Every noise was magnified into the sound of pursuers. Even the soft sighing of the wind in the distance seemed to her excited fancy the remote baying of the hound; while the sudden dropping of a pine-cone near her made her start, with a half uttered scream, as if her foes were already upon her. To have seen her then, as she stood glancing fearfully across her shoulder, her hand pressed to her palpitating heart, her lips parted in terror, and her cheek lividly pale, one would have compared her only to some beautiful, milk-white doe, suddenly startled by the hunter’s cry, and feeling in imagination the fangs of the enormous stag-hounds already at her throat.

To no purpose either was her scrutiny as to the condition of the two roads, in order to ascertain which of them presented the appearance of being most frequently travelled. It had plainly been many days, if not weeks, since a vehicle had passed over either. At last Kate selected the road to the right as the one which seemed to be the principal one. Yet, at this point, it flashed across her that, perhaps, the most travelled path was really the one she should avoid; for it probably led into the great highway, connecting Philadelphia with the sea-shore. She was but little acquainted with the country on this side of Sweetwater, forests extending almost unbrokenly across from one river to the other; but what little she knew satisfied her that this great highway might be traversed for hours without reaching succor. Within twenty years of the present time, the writer has passed over a space of twelve miles at a time, without seeing more than one house; and at the period of our story, the village at the end of that desolate stage was not even projected. Kate, indeed, might have walked all day along that highway, without meeting enough persons to protect her from the refugees. It was, therefore, almost certain recapture for her to take the path communicating with that road.

She paused, therefore, again. But the more she thought the more perplexed she became. Time, meanwhile, was passing; precious moments, big with destiny. She could not rely on the outlaws remaining ignorant of her flight a moment after daybreak; and already the night was waning fast. Drawing forth her watch, of which she had not been despoiled, most strangely as she thought, she discovered that the dawn was only an hour distant. What was an hour’s start, however, to one like her, wearied by the excessive fatigue of the preceding day, unused to travelling far on foot, and deprived of sleep for the last twenty-four hours, except for the slight interval at the hut. How could she expect to gain the Forks, even if she struck the right road, in less than two hours?

“If I hesitate longer,” she cried, in despair, “they will overtake me, long before I can reach any place of safety I am acquainted with. I must decide in some way. This right hand road, I fear, leads into the King’s highway: I will take the one on the left: God help me if I am wrong!”

Accordingly she turned in that direction, and having rested herself partially by the pause, ran forward again until she was quite out of breath. For half an hour, she continued alternately running, walking, and running again, occasionally pausing to listen: and in that time, as she calculated, had traversed between two and three miles. The forest still continued as wild as ever; but this did not alarm her; for she was aware that the wilderness extended to the very doors, as it were, of the settlement at the Forks. She therefore pushed forward, her excitement enabling her to disregard fatigue, and to forget that she had eaten little for a day. For another half an hour, consequently, she hurried on, and as the distance between her and the outlaws was increased, her hopes gradually rose.

Day was now beginning to break. The moon continued to shine as lustrously as ever; indeed, being now nearly at the zenith, her light seemed even more effulgent than when Kate left the hut; but there was a cold, gray hue over the eastern sky which heralded the morning. Gradually the white light of day stole over the orient heavens, when that of the moon assumed a partially sickly cast. The birds too now began to twitter in the underbrush and smaller growth around.

At this point Kate reached an opening in the woods, where the trees had been cut off a year or two ago. On the eastern side of this was a tract of pine land, where a fire had passed, leaving the tall firs standing stripped of their foliage, like a forest of black, charred masts against the heavens. Through this, in the distance, was seen a reddened sky, a proof that the sun, though still below the horizon, was close upon it. The route of Kate lying in the direction of this burnt district, it was not long before she saw the upper edge of his disc emerge, shooting long lines of light towards her, that came glancing between the black trunks of the pines, or bathed the greener space more directly in front with showers of golden radiance. The whole forest around was now alive with twittering birds. Meantime the moon, as if suddenly struck pale by an enchanter’s hand, seemed all at once to have lost its late glorious effulgence, and was now seen, a faint, waning orb, apparently powerless in the zenith. To the right and left, however, in the recesses of the woods, where the sunshine had not yet penetrated, the moonlight still lay, cold and beautiful, though even there less lustrous than it had been.

In a few minutes it grew dim also even in these secluded aisles, fading perceptibly to the eye as in a dissolving view. The sun had now risen completely above the horizon. The exhalations of the night still partially obscured him, however, so that he loomed large and inflamed on the vision. But directly he surmounted the region of these vapors; and at once the whole landscape was flooded with dazzling light. The black, charred pines; the verdant tract of low brush oak; and the arcades that ran before the eye into the forest on every side, glowed with the excess of effulgence: the leaves, that rustled slightly in the wind, flashed in the bright rays: and the moon became a pale, uncertain circle, the affrighted shadow of herself.

For another hour Kate pursued her way, without stopping longer than a few moments at a time, and then only to listen if she was pursued. At the end of that period she began to think that she ought to be in the neighborhood of the Forks. She pressed on, however, till the sun was nearly two hours high, yet without reaching her destination. She now became alarmed. At the pace at which she had been advancing, she ought, she knew, to have arrived at the Forks before this; besides, the road was becoming a mere wood-path; while the forest around was changing its character and assuming that of an impenetrable swamp. She now bethought her to compare the position of the sun with what it would be if she was advancing in the right direction. To her dismay she found that luminary over her left shoulder and behind, instead of in front, and on the right, as it should have been. At this discovery she came to a halt, overcome with the sudden faintness of despair.

During her progress, she had frequently passed other roads, opening into the one she was traversing, but as they were either evidently paths used only by the wood-cutters, or led off at right angles, she had carefully avoided them. Studiously had she kept to what appeared to be the most direct and beaten way, nor until this moment had she thought of testing it by the heavens. Thus she had unconsciously turned her face in the wrong direction, by following its tortuous course.

A moment’s reflection, however, suggested to her that the deviation of the road might be only temporary, though the fact that she had not reached the Forks, as she ought, told against this supposition. Drowning people, it is said, catch at straws, however, and nerving herself with this hope, she started afresh. But after walking for a considerable period longer, and carefully noting the position of the sun all the while, she became convinced that she was receding from the point of her destination, instead of advancing towards it.

When this discovery forced itself on her, nature at last gave way. Over-tasked though she had been, hope and energy had kept her up; but now both succumbed together; and her strength departed with them. Sinking tremblingly and powerless on the huge root of a mossy tree, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into sobs like a child.

But, when she had wept for a while, a reaction took place. She started suddenly to her feet.

“Why do I give way thus?” she cried. “Is not anything better than falling again into the hands of those ruffians? Better to drop down and die from sheer exhaustion, than to sit here trembling, like a hunted hare, till I am seized.”

As she spoke, she resumed her flight, running till she panted, and then walking rapidly on with desperate, but alas! purposeless energy. For the further she advanced, the more remote became the Forks, as she saw by the position of the sun; yet she dared not turn back, as that would be to run into the jaws of her hunters. The first cross-path that she met, and which led in the right direction, she entered, however. But after following this for awhile, it also went astray, and now she was in greater perplexity and dismay than ever.

In fact she was evidently advancing into one of those almost pathless swamps, which abounded in that region, and which had engulphed many a lost traveller as effectually as the sea swallows up a foundered crew. The soil beneath her was no longer solid, though sandy; but was a soft, black vegetable mould, in which she often sank to the ankles. The path, for it was now scarcely a road, was almost overgrown with bushes; and occasionally it was really difficult to tell where it was, the wheel-tracks, if they had ever existed, having long ago been obliterated.

Yet she struggled on. Despair gave her now the energy which hope had formerly supplied; and though almost exhausted with physical weakness, her brave soul still upheld her flagging frame, and still urged her forward. Thus she staggered on, all that morning, dragging her heavy limbs along, and continually rallying herself to a swifter pace, when she mistook the wind among the trees for the hurrying tread of pursuers, or the distant bay of a hound.

The sun was now high in the heavens. Kate had been on her feet since two hours before the dawn. She could no longer advance at a faster pace than a walk, and that a slow and painful one. She saw also that she was moving almost in a circle, the sun being now before her, now on her right, now behind her, and now to the left. But, though hopelessly lost in the swamp, though sometimes almost miring in the oozy soil, she did not, for one moment, entertain the thought of turning back.

“Oh! no, no,” she said wildly, “certain death, death in any shape, is better than falling again into those merciless hands.”

Even the idea of lingering for days, in a state of starvation, was less terrible to her than being retaken. She had heard of persons, lost in swamps, who had perished miserably for the want of food, and whose bleached skeletons, found long years after, had been the only clue their friends ever had to their fate; and she had formerly shuddered at such tales. But she did not shudder now. She felt that, if she could purchase immunity from the outlaws in no other way, she would gladly accept even this horrible alternative.

“God,” she said, “tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. He will give me strength to face such a death.”

Noon was now at hand. The path had long since dwindled into a mere blind track, formed rather by the natural space between the trees than by the footsteps of man or beast. Frequently tall bushes, interlaced into an impenetrable net-work, guarded the sides like a hedge; and again the path swelled into natural openings, half an acre or so in extent. Lofty trees, whose sombre verdure threw an almost funereal gloom around, towered high into the sky, with here and there a blasted pine, shooting, arrowy-like, high over all, and adding to the desolate aspect of the landscape.