Page:The Snake's Pass (Stoker).djvu/339

 encompassed me, made movement not only difficult and dangerous, but at times almost impossible. The electric feeling in the air had become intensified, and each moment I expected the thunderstorm to burst.

Every little while I called, "Norah! Norah!" in the vain hope that, whilst returning from her search for her father, she might come within the sound of my voice. But no answering sound came back to me, except the fierce roar of the storm laden with the wild dash of the breakers hurled against the cliffs and the rocks below.

Even then, so strangely does the mind work, the words of the old song, "The Pilgrim of Love," came mechanically to my memory, as though I had called "Orinthia" instead of "Norah:"—

On, on I went, following the line of the bog, till I had reached the northern point, where the ground rose and began to become solid. I found the bog here so swollen with rain that I had to make a long detour so as to get round to the western side. High up on the hill there was, I knew, a rough shelter for the cattle; and as it struck me that Joyce might have gone here to look after his stock, and that Norah had gone hither to search for him, I ran up to it. The cattle were there, huddled together in a solid mass behind the sheltering wall of sods and stones. I cried out as loudly as I could from the windward side, so that my voice would carry:—