Chapter 34 - Page 2

it advancing
from the Spittal, but was not dismayed, for it was, as yet, far
distant. The horsemen came thundering on, filling the whole glen
of Quharity. Now he knew that they had been sent out to ride him
down. He paused in dread, until they had swept past him. They came
back to look for him, riding more furiously than ever, and always
missed him, yet his fears of the next time were not lessened. They
were only the rain.

All through the night the dog followed him. He would forget it for
a time, and then it would be so close that he could see it dimly.
He never heard it bark, but it snapped at him, and a grin had
become the expression of its face. He stoned it, he even flung
himself at it, he addressed it in caressing tones, and always with
the result that it disappeared, to come back presently.

He found himself walking in a lake, and now even the instinct of
self-preservation must have been flickering, for he waded on,
rejoicing merely in getting rid of the dog. Something in the water
rose and struck him. Instead of stupefying him, the blow brought
him to his senses, and he struggled for his life. The ground
slipped beneath his feet many times, but at last he was out of the
water. That he was out in a flood he did not realize; yet he now
acted like one in full possession of his faculties. When his feet
sank in water, he drew back; and many times he sought shelter
behind banks and rocks, first testing their firmness with his
hands. Once a torrent of stones, earth, and heather carried him
down a hillside until he struck against a tree. He twined his arms
round it, and had just done so when it fell with him. After that,
when he touched trees growing in water, he fled from them, thus
probably saving himself from death.

What he heard now might have been the roll and crack of the
thunder. It sounded in his ear like nothing else. But it was
really something that swept down the hill in roaring spouts of
water, and it passed on both sides of him so that at one moment,
had he paused, it would have crashed into him, and at another he
was only saved by stopping. He felt that the struggle in the dark
was to go on till the crack of doom.

Then he cast himself upon the ground. It moved beneath him like
some great animal, and he rose and stole away from it. Several
times did this happen. The stones against which his feet struck
seemed to acquire life from his touch. So strong had he become, or
so weak all other things, that whatever clump he laid hands on by
which to pull himself out of the water was at once rooted up.

The daylight would not come. He longed passionately for it. He
tried to remember what it was like, and could not; he had been
blind so long. It was away in