The stable doors stood wide open, and Firefly and the other two horses were gone, just as on last Hallowe’en, when they had been chased several miles from home by youths on mischief bent. “I must walk, and, oh! it is so cold, and the air is so smoky from the forest fires that the moon gives no light. What if I get lost on the mountain, and the wolves eat me up?” shuddered hapless Eva, setting out, nevertheless, on her way toward the only refuge she knew, for, in the near neighborhood, the Groves family had no warm friends by reason of gran’ther’s unpopularity during the war, which had clung to him tenaciously ever since. She trudged on wearily, with the weight of an awful grief at her heart, and great, burning tears blinding her sombre dark eyes, so that it was no wonder that she could not see through the dense, overhanging smoke from the mountains, where the woods had been on fire for days, until all the neighbors were praying for rain to quench the spreading flames. Wearily, tremblingly, the little thing plodded along the road, shivering with cold, and starting at every sound of the eerie night, for she had always been called timid, considering she was a country girl, who oughtn’t to be afraid of anything. Mile after mile she went through the night, little dreaming that she had long ago lost her way and was wandering deeper into the woods at every fearful step, till at last she walked into a little creek up to her knees in the icy water. Trying to get out, she fell sprawling down upon the rock bed, and floundered there several moments before she extricated herself and scrambled out, drenched and freezing, on the bank. “Oh, Heaven, where have I wandered? I am lost in the woods, for there is no creek in the road between here and Goody Brown’s!” she thought, in despair. She knew not which way to turn; she could not see her hand before her in the darkness; but she felt that she would perish of cold and wet if she did not keep moving, and the bitter thought came to her that she could not keep going much longer for sheer fatigue, so that she must sink down presently and freeze to death in the biting cold. She was so young to die, and she loved life in spite of the cruel disappointments it had brought her, still hoping for something brighter in that distant future to which youth’s eyes are ever turned; so she dragged herself up to her feet and ran with all her strength a little way, then fell down, panting and exhausted, her wet garments freezing to her limbs, the shoes torn from her tender feet by the rocky road, the salt tears freezing on her cold cheeks. She rested a few moments, then began to crawl along over the ground, tearing her soft little hands on rocks and thorns till they bled, and sobbing as she went: “Oh, God, have mercy! Don’t let poor little Eva die of the cold out in the lonesome woods without a friend to close her eyes!”