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256 and something that was the nearest to a sob that he had ever know strangled his breath.

Twenty seconds later, from a bank behind the buildings, Yen Sung dropped stealthily into the narrow lane and began to run. One possible hope had flashed across his mind. In following the road to Overbury Edith would have to make a detour of half a mile in order to cross the River Aish by the bridge at Rockford; there was, indeed, no other way. By taking to the fields, wading the Aish, and striking the high-road at its nearest point, Yen Sung hoped just to intercept her.

He was under no delusion. To the plain warning of the doctor he added—or perhaps took them as intermingling in the scheme of destiny—the supernatural terrors of the day, and with dispassionate fatalism he bowed acquiescently. The extent of his hopes was that he might be permitted to reach his revered one before the vengeance of the furies caught him or his earthly powers failed. Under ordinary conditions the race was not a hopeless one—three fields, the river, and, beyond, a strip of meadow, lay between him and the high-road; but his heroic heart was chained to a slight and crippled frame. Already the rain, now descending in torrents, had soaked him to the skin and the sodden clay of the ploughed land hung in great clods about his feet. He beat his way through the hedges, but the thorns and brambles tore him through his thin clothes as though with hooks, and very soon he found with dismay that he could only stumble blindly forward with half-bent knees. All his life he had believed in demons, and now to justify his faith, they came in their legions to mock and thwart him. Some drove barbs into every tingling joint, tore his unhealed burns with their talons, or turned the beating rain that fell upon his face into alternate ice and fire. Others, riding on the wind like drifts of smoke, surrounded him