Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/117

 artificial course of life, this strange race in the snow seemed a return to very nature. Sure, this tense, exhilarating agony of hope and fear and hot-breathing energy were worth a hundred triumphs in the drawing-room!

Yard by yard the horses ran me down. But I had fixed my eyes upon those weird trees ahead, that assumed shapes more palpable and familiar as I ran; and though I could hear the perpetual shoutings and hoof-thuds of my enemies, I never once looked back, but trotted valiantly on with a mind for nothing but the woods. There was no time then to enjoy the quaintness of the matter, or to laugh at my ridiculous employ. However, that lack hath been made up later. Soon I was so near the trees that I could plainly see the ditch I had to cross, and the very gap the hither side it in the fence that I proposed to scramble through. The proximity of safety lent me strength, and for a few yards my failing pace was perceptibly improved.

Here I had a horrid fright. My feet were almost on those dim, mysterious woods, the snow upon them pure, the moon upon them eerie, and such a mighty silence in the trees that if a squirrel cracked a beech twig the report of it rang among them like a gun, when a pistol barked out loud and brutally, and a bullet whistled by my ear and pattered ominously in the ditch. 'Twas a very cruel, peremptory means, I thought, and my heart stood still with terror. Not my feet, forsooth, for fear was a sharp spur to their flagging ardour. I durst not look be