SHUDDERING with fear and gasping for breath, they lay side by side, their convulsed faces pressed into the grass. Such a nightmare of terrors as they had endured had for a time overthrown them both completely. But in their veins was youth, and very soon the courage it gives began to renew them. Yet, as thus they lay in the grass by the bank of the river, fighting for the strength to go on, there was a grim sense already in each of their hearts that they were no more than a pair of birds in a snare. Not for an instant dare they consider how long they might hope to elude pursuit. Perhaps it might be given to them to enjoy an hour of freedom--if freedom it could be called with a desperate hue and cry upon their heels--but it was by no means certain that even so much grace as this would be vouchsafed. They rose presently from the cool grass. Already their strength had returned. It was still early morning, not more than seven o’clock perhaps, but the day promised to be glorious. A trembling sheen, like a curtain of finest gossamer, was falling from the face of the sun; the mists were receding from the fast-flowing river. Cattle were lowing in the fields; larks were singing in the upper air. Nature in all her color and music, in all her pomp, variety and gladness, was spread before them. Every brake was alive with the song of birds; from every hedge and tree the tender green was bursting. How was it possible, amid such a pageant of young life, for either of them to think of death? A little chilled by the grass in which they had lain, they began again to run by the side of the river. Like a pair of colts they shook their limbs free. For a mile or more they ran their hardest in order to get warm, and perhaps in order to outstrip the thought that held their souls in thrall. On and on they ran. The sense of motion, of untrammeled freedom in their pulses, was like a delicious madness now. At last they stopped, feeling very hot and breathless, and bathed their hands and faces in the river. Then they made the discovery that they were desperately hungry. Alas! there was no means at hand of staying their pangs. And even had food been obtainable they would have been face to face with the fact that they had not so much as a penny between them. The whole of their worldly store consisted of the clothes in which they stood and a dagger whose hilt was curiously wrought in silver. But these were slender means enough to meet even the most pressing of their needs. Alas! that Anne, in the obsession of her high resolve, had forgotten the importance of putting a purse in her pocket.