ANOTHER ESCAPE

[Illustration]




IV


Salomy Jane slept little that night, nor did her father. But towards
morning he fell into a tired man's slumber until the sun was well up
the horizon. Far different was it with his daughter: she lay with her
face to the window, her head half lifted to catch every sound, from
the creaking of the sun-warped shingles above her head to the far-off
moan of the rising wind in the pine trees. Sometimes she fell into
a breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living over every moment of the
stolen interview; feeling the fugitive's arm still around her, his
kisses on her lips; hearing his whispered voice in her ears--the birth
of her new life! This was followed again by a period of agonizing
dread--that he might even then be lying, his life ebbing away, in the
woods, with her name on his lips, and she resting here inactive, until
she half started from her bed to go to his succor. And this went on
until a pale opal glow came into the sky, followed by a still paler
pink on the summit of the white Sierras, when she rose and hurriedly
began to dress. Still so sanguine was her hope of meeting him, that