'Night has succeeded to night,' she muttered gloomily, 'and has brought
no succour to my body, and no hope to my heart! Mile on mile have I
journeyed, and danger is still behind, and loneliness for ever before.
The shadow of death deepens over the boy; the burden of anguish grows
weightier than I can bear. For me, friends are murdered, defenders are
distant, possessions are lost. The God of the Christian priests has
abandoned us to danger and deserted us in woe. It is for me to end the
struggle for us both. Our last refuge has been in this place--our
sepulchre shall be here as well!'

With one last look at the cold and comfortless sky, she advanced to the
very edge of the lake's precipitous bank. Already the child was raised
in her arms, and her body bent to accomplish successfully the fatal
spring, when a sound in the east--faint, distant, and fugitive--caught
her ear. In an instant her eye brightened, her chest heaved, her cheek
flushed. She exerted the last relics of her wasted strength to gain a
prominent position upon a ledge of the rocks behind her, and waited in
an agony of expectation for a repetition of that magic sound.


In a moment more she heard it again--for the child, stupefied with
terror at the action that had accompanied her determination to plunge
with him into the lake, now kept silence, and she could listen
undisturbed. To unpractised ears the sound that so entranced her would
have been scarcely audible. Even the experienced traveller would have
thought it nothing more than the echo of a fallen stone among the rocks
in the eastward distance. But to her it was no unimportant sound, for
it gave the welcome signal of deliverance and delight.

As the hour wore on, it came nearer and nearer, tossed about by the