is no boat in which she can
get away. She hears Karen's wild screams,--he is killing her! Oh,
where can she go? Is there any place on that little island where he
will not find her? She thinks she will creep into one of the empty old
houses by the water; but no, she reflects, if I hide there, Ringe will
bark and betray me the moment Louis comes to look for me. And Ringe
saved her life, for next day Louis's bloody tracks were found all
about those old buildings where he had sought her. She flies, with
Karen's awful cries in her ears, away over rocks and snow to the
farthest limit she can gain. The moon has set; it is about two o'clock
in the morning, and oh, so cold! She shivers and shudders from head to
feet, but her agony of terror is so great she is hardly conscious of
bodily sensation. And welcome is the freezing snow, the jagged ice and
iron rocks that tear her unprotected feet, the bitter brine that beats
against the shore, the winter winds that make her shrink and tremble;
"they are not so unkind as man's ingratitude!" Falling often, rising,
struggling on with feverish haste, she makes her way to the very edge
of the water; down almost into the sea she creeps, between two rocks,
upon her hands and knees, and crouches, face downward, with Ringe
nestled close beneath her breast, not daring to move through the long
hours that must pass before the sun will rise again. She is so near
the ocean she can almost reach the water with her hand. Had the wind
breathed the least roughly the waves must have washed over her. There
let us leave her and go back to Louis Wagner. Maren heard her sister
Karen's shrieks as she fled. The poor girl had crept into an
unoccupied room in a distant part of the house, striving to hide
herself. He could not kill her with blows, blundering in the darkness,
so he wound a handkerchief about her throat and strangled her. But now
he seeks anxiously for Maren. _Has_ she escaped? What terror is in the
thought! Escaped, to tell the tale, to accuse him as the murderer of
her sisters. Hurriedly, with desperate anxiety, he seeks for her. His
time was growing short; it was not in his programme that this brave
little creature should give him so much trouble; he had not calculated
on resistance from these weak and helpless women. Already it was
morning, soon it would be daylight. He could not find her in or near
the house; he went down to the empty and dilapidated houses about the
cove, and sought her everyw