Elizabeth looked down at the ground, then steadily up at Black Smith. There was in her blue eyes a hard expression. Thus had she looked when she had refused to sell her vegetables to the rude woman in Chambersburg. Thus had she looked also when she had first heard of John Baring’s crime. From some ancestor she had inherited a stubborn will. Her affection, her common sense, her pride, directed that she free Herbert promptly and that they go away as soon and as quietly as they could. But to neither affection nor common sense nor pride would she yield. She would have made a thorough-going early Christian martyr. “How do I know that after I have given you the paper you will let him go?” she asked. “I might get the paper and you might not be satisfied with it and refuse to bring him.” Black Smith looked at her warily. He rather admired this finesse and he had no fear that she would go away. “The mountain people keep their word,” said he. “You set on that rock an’ I’ll bring him an’ others.” Suddenly he grinned. “If you ain’t here, of course you know what happens to your baby boy. An’ don’t you come after me!” “I shan’t come after you,” promised Elizabeth. Once Black Smith stopped and looked back at her. Then he went on. Elizabeth could not see that he followed any road. When he was out of sight she hid her face for a moment in her hands; then she looked up. “It will be a little while until they come back,” said she to herself. “Then they will try to catch me. They will think I have gone down to the house and they will hunt and by that time--” She rose and looked down the side of the mountain. “I had old Joe to lead the other day,” said she. “And I had some respect for my bones and my clothes and I went round obstacles instead of going over them. Now--” She looked back over her shoulder. The woods had closed absolutely behind Black Smith. She believed that the settlement of the mountain people must be some distance away, else sounds would have penetrated to her ears. It was a desperate chance, but she took it. She started recklessly, not back to the comparatively open ground, but in a direct line downward. She fell and she picked herself up; she caught her dress in briars and pulled it loose without any mercy on the cloth or without any care for the appearance which she would soon present. She stopped but once, and then merely to listen. There was no sound in the woods of any pursuit, there was scarcely a song of a bird. Again she plunged on. She did not think of John Baring, she scarcely thought of Herbert. She was a desperate creature, who forgets all but the goal, even the reason for the race.