Neva dared not venture down to the loch, nor dared she risk an appeal to the sailors on board the yacht. Her safety lay in avoiding every one in the vicinity of the Wilderness, and she turned up the wild mountain side, with the idea of skirting the mountain and descending to the valley upon the opposite side. The low-growing mountain shrubbery screened her from view, but it also impeded her flight. She bounded on and on, panting and breathless, but a horrible pain in her side compelled her to slacken her speed, and finally she proceeded onward at a walk. Her heart seemed bursting with the thronging life-blood, her head and body were one great throbbing pulse, and her feet grew heavy as if clogged with leaden weights. Unable to proceed further without rest, she sat down upon a huge boulder under a protecting cliff to rest. The gray morning scarcely penetrated to the gloomy spot in which she had halted. The trees were all around her, and the winds made wild moaning among their branches. She could see nothing of the Wilderness, nor of any house. She was lost in the pathless wild, in the chill gray morning, with a drizzling mist, as she now for the first time noticed, falling all around her like a heavy mourning vail. “At any rate, I am free,” she thought, lifting her pale wild face to the frowning sky in rapture. “Free! O God, I thank thee!” And then, with that prayer of gratitude upon her lips, with her head raised to ecstacy of joy, there was borne to her ears the barking of dogs and the loud yells of men--the sounds of an active and terrible pursuit! The enemy was close at hand! CHAPTER XIV. NEVA STILL DEFIANT. The sounds of active and hostile pursuit, growing every instant louder as the pursuers neared Neva’s temporary halting-place, startled the young fugitive into renewed flight. She started up like a wearied bird from its nest, and fled onward through tangled shrubbery and over outcropping boulders, tripping now and then over some loose rock, which, at the touch of her light feet, went rumbling down the steep mountain side with a crash that rang in her ears, frightening her to yet greater speed. She sped through thickets of the dwarfed mountain pines and firs, and over open and sterile patches of ground, where there were no trees nor friendly rocks to screen her flying figure, and the drizzling Scotch mist fell around her like a dusky vail, and the skies were gloomy above her, and the air was keen with wintry chill. And still was borne to her ears, sometimes louder, sometimes fainter, the sounds of the barking of dogs and the shouts of men. These sounds quickened Neva’s flagging steps, but she could not outrun her pursuers. They were on her track, and sooner or later, unless she could out-wit them, or hide from them, they must capture her.