"They have killed him!" she shrieked. "I can't find him in the dark." She was out of the saddle now, bending down and groping with her shaking, tender little hands on the torn and trampled earth. A wilder gust of wind brought the beat of rapidly retreating hoofs to her strained ears. She sprang up with a new fear and cried it aloud high and far above the shriek of the wind. "They are taking him away! Will you never come? Is it you--uncle Philip? Oh--why--don't you come to me? It's Ruth." "It is I--Father Orin," said the priest near by. She did not reply, nor even glance at him, although the cloud curtain was now suddenly lifted again, and she could see clearly. She did not notice that all the horsemen had vanished. She saw only the motionless form of the man she loved lying some distance away. It was plain that he had pressed the assassins as far from her as he could; that his outstretched arms had fallen in some supreme effort. The hunting-knife glittered in the moonlight at a distance from his hand. He must have fought on with his bare hands after his only weapon had been struck from his grasp. His eyes were closed, and his face was like the face of the dead. Ruth, dropping to the earth beside him, had taken his head on her lap before the priest could come up and dismount. She did not reply, nor even hear his alarmed questioning. "See if he is living, Father," she said. "Here, put your hand on his heart--here--where my hand is. Make haste. Why are you so slow?" Then flashing round on him in her impetuous way: "Why don't you say that you feel his heart beat? Of course you do! Of course he is alive. How could he be dead--in a moment--a flash--like this! He is so young. He has only begun to live. And so strong and brave. Oh, so brave, Father! Dear Father Orin--if you could have seen how fearlessly he stood, between them and me--waiting for them to come! Only one, too, against so many. But I wasn't afraid while I could see him. No, not for a moment, even against them all. And then when it was dark, and I couldn't see him, and I could only hear--" she broke down, shuddering and weeping. While she spoke the priest had been unfastening Paul's collar and was trying to find the wound. The bosom of his shirt was already darkly dyed with blood. "He is alive; his heart is still beating," said Father Orin, huskily.