It was, then, useless: she had done everything possible to a human being, and all that was now left was for her to pray; and sinking, with clasped hands, to her knees, she again gave way to the despair of her heart, when a short, sharp snap on her right made her leap to her feet and run hurriedly over the slippery pine needles in the direction from which it had come. For from that sound she felt that her worst fears were realised, and that he had indeed sought this solitude for the horrible purpose she dreaded. But the pistol had missed fire, and she might yet be in time, though so dreadful was the feeling upon her that her energies felt frozen, and to her it seemed that she was barely crawling over the ground. There he stood, not fifty yards from her, fitting a cap upon the pistol he held, and then, every stroke jarring upon her heart, so distinctly in the strained state of her faculties was it heard, she could make out that he was tapping the pistol that the powder might ascend the nipple. But it was all like some horrible nightmare: she could see every act with almost a clairvoyant power--she could hear with a fearful distinctness; but she could not shriek--she could not call to him to desist. It was as though certain of her faculties were chained, while others were goaded into unnatural activity. A few seconds longer, and she felt that she would be too late--that the dread deed would be accomplished, and she alone with a still, dreadful corpse--when, panting, half-mad with fear and the horror which gave her strength, she ran to Norton's side, grasped at his arm, and then her powers of utterance returned. As she seized his arm he turned upon her fiercely, dashed her to the ground, and raised his pistol; but in an instant Ada was again upon her feet, and grasped the fatal weapon, when there was a bright, blinding flash, a loud report, and then, for Ada Lee, the present became a blank. Book 1, Chapter VII. BALM. It seemed as though that report awakened Philip Norton from the fit of mad despair that had prompted him to seek in oblivion the rest he could not find here--awakened him to the sense that he must be a murderer; for there, stretched at his feet, her light muslin dress already deeply stained by the blood flowing from her shoulder, lay the brave girl who had struggled to his side to suffer, almost with the loss of her own, for her successful endeavour to save his life. For some minutes, as he stood there in that dim pine arcade, Philip Norton's brain was giddy; he felt as though awakening from some horrible dream, and it was only by an effort that he could recall the present; when, throwing the pistol aside, he knelt down by the fainting girl, and by means of his handkerchief succeeded in staunching the blood flowing from a long, jagged wound torn by the bullet in its passage along her shoulder.