“Let me die here,” said Neva, her sweet young voice rising to a wail. “Oh, men, have you no pity for me? Can you not see that Craven Black is my enemy? Will you not protect me, and set me free? In the name of Mercy--” “Hear her!” said the sailor who had acted as captain of the yacht, speaking in an audible whisper. “As mad as a March hare--and so young too!” Clearly there was no help to be expected from the sailors. Neva retreated to the further corner, as a helpless mouse retreats to a corner of the trap, and Craven Black followed her. There was a brief struggle, and Neva was again a captive. “We must take turns in carrying her home,” said Craven Black, pinioning Neva’s arms to her sides. “It’ll be a tough job up the steep mountain path, but we can do it.” “It’s no great task,” said one of the seamen. “She can’t weigh much. She’s fell away since she came to Scotland, and she can’t be heavier nor a child of ten.” Craven Black caught up the girl’s light figure, and bore her from the cabin, the men following. He strode up the steep hill, holding Neva fiercely to his breast, and now and then he looked down upon her still white face with an expression singularly made up of love and hatred. Yes, although he had married Lady Wynde from motives of interest, and because, as he had said to himself, a half-loaf of bread was better than none at all, his old love for Neva was not dead in his guilty breast. It was a strange passion, growing hot and cool by turns, now verging toward hatred, and now reviving to its olden strength. As he gathered the girl in his arms, and went up the hill with her at long, fierce strides, he said to himself that there was no crime at which he would pause, no obstacle which he would not sweep from his path, if the heiress of Hawkhurst would only promise to marry him on the attainment of his freedom. “Neva!” he whispered. The young girl raised her eyes to his with such a look of loathing and detestation that his love for her changed suddenly again to hatred. He knew in that moment that the guilty scheme he had just conceived was only a vain fancy, and that Neva could never be induced under any circumstances to marry him. “I’m tired, captain,” he said abruptly. “You can carry her.” The captain took the helpless burden and went on, Black keeping at his side. In this manner, taking turns in carrying the young captive, the party returned to the Wilderness. The mist was still falling when they came upon the plateau, but Mrs. Black stood out upon the lawn, her head bare, her morning robe saturated with wet, and her face worn and haggard with anxiety. There were great dark circles under her hard black eyes, and her mouth was compressed, and there were deep lines about it that added ten years to her apparent age. What she had suffered that day from fear of exposure through her injured step-daughter, her face declared, but she had known less of remorse than of apprehension and terror.