At length he spoke: 

“Hallo, up there!”

The sound of those simple words produced an amazing effect upon the hearers.  Dacres sprang down with a cry of joy.  “Come, come!” he shouted to the ladies; “friends are here!” And running down the stairs, he reached the bottom and grasped the stranger by both arms.

In the dim light he could detect a tall, slim, sinewy form, with long, black, ragged hair and white neck-tie.

“You’d best get out of this, and quick, too,” said the Rev. Saul Tozer.  “They’re all off now, but they’ll be back here in less than no time.  I jest thought I’d look in to see if any of you folks was around.”

By this time the ladies were both at the bottom of the stairs.

“Come!” said Tozer; “hurry up, folks.  I’ll take one lady and you take t’other.”

“Do you know the woods?”

“Like a book.”

“So do I,” said Dacres.

He grasped Mrs. Willoughby’s hand and started.

“But Minnie!” said Mrs. Willoughby.

“You had better let him take her; it’s safer for all of us,” said Dacres.

Mrs. Willoughby looked back as she was dragged on after Dacres, and saw Tozer following them, holding Minnie’s hand.  This reassured her.

Dacres dragged her on to the foot of the bank.  Here she tried to keep up with him, but it was steep, and she could not.

Whereupon Dacres stopped, and, without a word, raised her in his arms as though she were a little child, and ran up the bank.  He plunged into the woods.  Then he ran on farther.  Then he turned and doubled.

Mrs. Willoughby begged him to put her down.

“No,” said he; “they are behind us.  You can not go fast enough.  I should have to wait and defend you, and then we would both be lost.”

“But, oh! we are losing Minnie.”

“No, we are not,” cried Dacres; “that man is ten times stronger than I am.  He is a perfect elephant in strength.  He dashed past me up the hill.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Your face was turned the other way.  He is ahead of us now somewhere.”

“Oh, I wish we could catch up to him.”

[Illustration:  “AT THIS DACRES RUSHED ON FASTER.”]

At this Dacres rushed on faster.  The effort was tremendous.  He leaped over fallen timbers, he burst through the underbrush.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll kill yourself if you go so fast,” said Mrs. Willoughby.  “We can’t catch up to them.”

At this Dacres slackened his pace, and went on more carefully.  She again begged him to put her down.  He again refused.  Upon this she felt perfectly helpless, and recalled, in a vague way, Minnie’s ridiculous question of “How would you like to be run away with by a great, big, horrid man, Kitty darling?”

Then she began to think he was insane, and felt very anxious.

At last Dacres stopped.  He was utterly exhausted.  He was panting terribly.  It had been a fearful journey.  He had run along the bank up to that narrow valley which he had traversed the day before, and when he stopped it was on the top of that precipice where he had formerly rested, and where he had nurtured such dark purposes against Mrs. Willoughby.