Oh, the night, how long and terrible it seemed. Though it was past midnight when they had driven her out from home, and she seemed to have been walking hours, and hours, and hours, no welcome rays of daylight glimmered through the dense wooded gloom of the long night. In the distance she heard the tu-whit of the mystic owl, and the almost human scream of the terrible panther, thirsting for prey, and trembled and shuddered with fear of becoming his victim. She moaned to herself that if she lived until to-morrow all her golden hair would be turned white by the agony of these interminable hours. She would be changed into an old woman in a night. Oh, the terror of the awful darkness and solitude, without one ray of light or welcome sound! If she had possessed a fortune, little Eva would have given it gladly for one sound of a human voice, even though it spoke to her in chiding. And through all the darkness there was one sight ever before her eyes--the two men lying stark and dead in those crimson pools upon the floor of her dainty little white-hung room, her maiden retreat from all the world. That sight would haunt her till she died, be her years few or many. “I was not to blame. The sin lies at another’s door. Why did they drive me out like a leper, to perish on the highway?” she moaned, dragging herself on and on, until, finally, she sank down unconscious. She lay like one dead on the carpet of dead leaves and briery vines. Moments went by unheeded, until at last a dim, gray light filtered through the darkness and the yellowish smoke from the distant fires. The light spread and spread, grew bright, then golden. She came to herself again with the sunlight slanting through dead, leafless boughs, down into her pallid face, and, opening her dark eyes wide, she sat up and looked around. She was couched in the pathless woods. She heard the faint whir of the pheasant’s wing, the plaintive call of the partridge, the low sough of the wind in the pine trees, but no human voice mixed with the echoes of woodland life. She was stiff and sore, and her wet clothing clung to her limbs, a little steam arising from them in the sun’s warming rays. CHAPTER VI. SWEET BELLS OUT OF TUNE. Scarcely had the echo of Eva’s footsteps died away as she fled from Stony Ledge, the old home farm, in disgrace and exile, ere it was discovered that Gran’ther Groves had fallen down in one of the fits to which he was subject. Dan, the chore boy, who had just come in with a startled face, having heard of the tragedy from the returning party in the hay wagon, grew as pale as ashes when the twins quickly drew him aside and whispered some eager warnings in his ear. He whispered back hoarsely, with starting eyes: