Still the thought of her suffering, perhaps dying, father, urged her on. She saw the dancing lights close before her, she heard voices. She felt the embankment tremble under her feet. Surely some violent commotion was taking place before her; but what it could be she had neither time nor power to conjecture. Then there went by overhead, invisible in the darkness, a train of wild geese, going south for the winter, and as they flew they uttered loud, wild cries, like the barking of hounds in the clouds—a horrible, startling sound fit to unnerve any who were unaware of the cause. For a moment she stood still, listening to the aerial ghostly sounds. She held her breath. Then again she ran. As Zita ran, it seemed to her that assuredly she saw but two lights. There must have been but two, and they were stationary. She tried to call, but her voice failed her; her throat was parched. She could but run. Next moment the lights blazed large on her, and then she grasped a foot. 'Help! help!' CHAPTER VII PROFITS 'What do you want? Who are you?' asked Ki Drownlands, when he had sufficiently recovered his self-possession to see that some one was clinging to him, and that that person was a woman. 'Help! Come back! Father is ill.' 'I don't care. Let go. You hurt me.' She hurt him by her touch on his boot! His nerves were thrilling, and the pressure of her fingers was unendurable in the surexcitation of every fibre of his system. 'Oh, help! help!' She would not relax her hold. 'I cannot. I've my own concerns to attend.' Drownlands remained silent for a moment. He was shivering as one in an ague fit—shivering as though the marrow in his bones were touched with frost. Presently he asked in a voice of constraint— 'How long have you been here? What have you seen?' He stooped to his stirrup, unhitched one of the lanterns and held it aloft, above the person who appealed for his aid. The dim yellow light fell over a head of thick amber hair and a pale, beautifully moulded face, with large lustrous eyes, looking up entreatingly at him. His hand that held the lantern was unsteady, and the light quivered. To disguise his agitation, he gave the lantern a pendulous motion, and the reflection glinted and went out, glinted again in those great beseeching eyes, and glowed in that copper-gold hair, as though waves of glory flashed up in the darkness and set again in darkness. 'What have you seen?' he repeated. 'Seen?—I see you. I want help. You will help me?' 'How long have you been here?' 'How long? I am but this instant come. I have run.' Her bosom was heaving under a gay kerchief, her breath came in little puffs of steam that passed as golden dust in the halo of the lantern.