(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.
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