Her wild eyes searched the mountain side as she hurried on. There was no hole in the rocks into which she might creep, and lie concealed until her enemies should have passed. The trees were too low and scraggy to offer her shelter among their few and scanty foliaged branches. Her way was difficult and tortuous, and with a sudden change of purpose, Neva turned aside from her course of skirting the mountain, and plunged downward toward the mountain’s base. “I shall come down upon the side nearly opposite the loch,” she thought. “At any rate, I have passed beyond the plateau.” In the course of ten minutes more, she struck into a rude wagon track, which Neva conjectured led from the Wilderness to some farm-house or hamlet upon the opposite side of the mountain. She followed the circuitous, steep, and slowly descending track, looking, as she ran, like some wild spirit of the mist. The sounds of pursuit faded out of hearing, and again she sat down to rest, her limbs giving way beneath her. Her tongue was parched and swollen, and the blood surged through her frame still with that one gigantic throbbing, and her feet ached with an utter weariness, yet she got up presently and staggered on, with fearing backward glances over her shoulders, and her eyes staring wildly from out the wet whiteness of her young face. “I can’t keep on much longer,” she murmured aloud. “I feel very strange and ill. Perhaps I shall die here, and alone. Oh, is there no help for me?” No answer came to that piteous cry save the wailing of the winds among the pine boughs, and the dashing of the sleet-like rain in her face. She moved more and more slowly. Her garments seemed strangely heavy to her, and her feet grew more and more like leaden clogs weighing her down to the earth. A terrible despair seized upon her. With a wild prayer on her lips and a faintness like that of death upon her, she leaned against a low tree, clinging to it to prevent herself from falling. As her head sunk forward wearily upon her breast, her closing eyes caught a glimpse through the trees of an object at a little distance that lent to her for the moment an unreal strength and vigor, and she gave a great cry of joy, as hope surged back into her young fainting heart. The object was only a small cabin built of cobblestones, a mere shepherd’s hut perhaps, or, as was far more likely, it had been built long ago for the occasional use of belated sportsmen who, during a stay at the Wilderness, found themselves lost upon the mountain. It had a strong roof and a capacious chimney, but it exhibited no sign of habitation. Neva did not observe this fact, and pressed onward to the door of the cabin, which she opened without preliminary knocking. There was no one in the cabin.