Then she started to run. Now the road was comparatively smooth and she knew each turn. He must be at home. This was not the day of brigands! Surely she would find him watching for her, worried because she had not come! But Herbert was not at home. The old house was grim and silent and empty. Common sense directed that she should go at once for help. But who would help her on this inhospitable hill? Would people not rather rejoice in her misfortune? Who would venture now, at night, into the neighborhood of the mountaineers of whom every one was afraid by day? She thought of the words of the farmer. “There are things you’d better just let be, like weasels and skunks.” She remembered all that Colonel Thomas had told her of them, of their certain aim, of their indifference to authority. It would be far better to negotiate with them herself, to go alone and make any concession to bring Herbert back. Then she and Herbert would flee from the home of their ancestors never, never to return. It was now almost midnight and the distance to dawn was not long. Elizabeth sat all night at the window, listening, and certain that she heard occasionally the sound of a footstep. At the first sign of daylight she would start and go on foot to the old cabin and thence into the mountaineers’ settlement. Just before daylight she heard a sound and saw a dark form emerge from the woods. She leaned far out the window to see as well as she could. At first she thought it was Herbert, but it proved to be too large an object to be human. When she recognized old Joe, she rushed out and took him by the bridle. He was dull of vision and feeble of step and therefore ill-equipped to make his way alone through thickets and over rocks, but eventually instinct had brought him home, though he had suffered cruelly on the journey. His skin was torn by briars, his knees were bleeding from numerous falls. Elizabeth caught the bridle. In the dim light she could see that it had been severed apparently by a knife. She talked to him as she fed him and brushed him gently. “Oh, you poor Joe, you’ve got to start out again! I’m sorry for you, but I’ve got to go as fast as I can!” In the first gray light she climbed on old Joe’s back. He gave a resentful whinny and then started into the woods in which he had recently had such perilous adventure. Once he snorted as though in alarm, and Elizabeth looked round sharply. But she could see no dangerous object, and Joe could not speak to tell her of a guard asleep under a tree. Little by little the woods grew gray; then the trunks of the trees turned pale gold. The chorus of the birds sounded from the tree-tops and from every thicket. It was the moment in which the cheerful heart is most uplifted.