Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/276



face before her seemed only part of her dark dreams as Alice wakened from her unconsciousness. She hoped in an instant to waken into the world of reality she had always known, not this abyss with its red glare and creeping tongues of flame. She couldn't understand why her arms felt so numb and why they didn't answer the command of her nerves.

No moment of Alice's life had ever been more fearful, more fraught with despair, than that in which her full consciousness returned to her. The fire's glow was more lurid and terrifying than ever. The flame itself was nearer: already it had crept almost to the bottom of the glen. The way was still open, but a few moments would see it closed. Yet all these things were apart from her and infinitely remote. The only reality in her life, now that her dreams were done, was the intent face of her captor.

The red radiance was upon it, and all semblance of humanity seemed gone. Rather it seemed the face of some dreadful inmate of an Inferno. The glow was in his dark eyes too: they were too close to hers for her to mistake this