I moved rapidly along toward the tall street-lamp that diffused a dim and murky light from its frost-crusted lantern at the corner of the square, and before I reached it I encountered the first danger of my undertaking.

Protected, fortunately, by the shadow of the high stone-wall near which I walked rapidly, I met Dinah, so nearly face to face that the whiff of the pipe she was smoking was warm upon my cheek.  Wrapped in her old cloth shawl and quilted hood, she muttered as she went, and staggered too, I thought, though here the northeast wind, that swept her along before it, might have been at fault, while, blowing in my face, it retarded my progress.

I passed her unchallenged, but, glancing back just as I turned the corner, I became aware that she was retracing her steps.  I fled rapidly on until I reached the shelter of a friendly nook between two houses (well remembered of old), when, turning again to gaze, I saw her standing immovable as a statue beneath the lamp-post, evidently looking in the direction I had taken.  There seemed no way of escape now save in persistent flight.  My place of concealment might be too readily detected by a cautious observer, a savage on the war-trail.  Should Dinah herself pursue me, I knew my speed would distance her; but, that prompt pursuit of some kind was imminent, I knew from that moment.

My aim was to reach the house of Dr. Pemberton, no intermediate one presenting itself as that of an acquaintance of whom I could ask shelter, and belief in the truth of my assertions.  Of this house I remembered the position with tolerable accuracy.  It formed one, I knew, of a long block of buildings extending from one street to another, and was near the centre.

I had been there only on rare occasions, when his niece abode with him, for he dwelt ordinarily in widowed solitude, although, our intimacy was that of relatives rather than of patient and physician.

For this desired goal I strained every nerve, every muscle, every faculty, on that never-to-be-forgotten night of bitter, freezing cold, and driving sleet and blast, which seemed to proclaim itself, in every howling gust, “The wind Euroclydon!”

CHAPTER XIII.

At first, excitement and terror winged my feet; but even these refused, after I had gone a few squares, to do their friendly office.

Bareheaded, but for a filmy veil, soon thoroughly drenched through; barehanded and almost barefooted, for my thin silk slippers and stockings formed not, after my first few steps, the slightest impediment to wet or cold, I felt that I must perish by the wayside.  The sleety storm drove sharply in my face, rendered doubly sensitive to its rigor by long absence from outward air.  My insufficient clothing clung closely about me, freezing in every fold, and I glided rather than walked along the icy pavement, scarcely lifting my stiffened feet, or having power to do so.