e heard the savage brutes howling across the meadow. (It is well
enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offered to shoot the dogs.)

The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone: she was game to the
tip of her high-bred ears. But the fearful pace at which she had just
been going told on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart beat like a
trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still fled industriously
up the right bank of the stream. When she had gone a couple of miles,
and the dogs were evidently gaining again, she crossed the broad, deep
brook, climbed the steep left bank, and fled on in the direction of the
Mount-Marcy trail. The fording of the river threw the hounds off for
a time. She knew, by their uncertain yelping up and down the opposite
bank, that she had a little respite: she used it, however, to push on
until the baying was faint in her ears; and then she dropped, exhausted,
upon the ground.

This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Roused again by the baying
pack, she leaped forward with better speed, though without that keen
feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in the morning. It was still
a race for life; but the odds were in her--favor, she thought. She
did not appreciate the dogged persistence of the hounds, nor had any
inspiration told her that the race is not to the swift.

She was a little confused in her mind where to go; but an instinct kept
her course to the left, and consequently farther away from her fawn.
Going now slower, and now faster, as the pursuit seemed more distant
or nearer, she kept to the southwest, crossed the stream again, left
Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Haystack and Skylight in the
direction of the Upper Au Sable Pond. I do not know her exact course
through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, and frightful
wildernesses. I only know that the poor thing worked her way along
painfully, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, lying down "dead beat"
at intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the remorseless dogs,
until, late in the afternoon, she staggered down the shoulder of
Bartlett, and stood upon the shore of the lake. If she could put that
piece of water between her and her pursuers, she would be safe. Had she
strength to swim it?

At her first step into the water she saw a sight that sent her back with
a bound. There was a boat mid-lake: two men were in it. One was rowing:
the other had a gun in his hand. They were looking towards her: