CHAPTER X.

Snatched from the grave.

Back over that terrible road of drifting snow the old grave digger made his way as swiftly as his trembling limbs could carry him.

He had endeavored to mark carefully the spot where he had made that lonely grave, but the snow was drifting so hard with each furious gust of wind as to make it almost impossible to find it upon retracing his steps.

Quaking with terror, and with a prayer on his lips to Heaven to guide him, old Adam sat down his lantern, and by its dim, flickering light peered breathlessly around.

There was the blasted pine tree and toward the right of it the stump.  The grave must be less than a rod below it.

With a heart beating with great strangling throbs, he paced off the distance, and then stood quite still, holding his lantern down close to the frozen earth.

For an instant his heart almost ceased beating—­there was no sign of the little mound, with the leafless branch of bush he had been so careful to place there.

Then, suddenly a moan from beneath his very feet fell upon his ear, causing him to fairly gasp for breath.

“Thank God!  I have found it!” he cried.

In an instant he had thrown off his coat, thin though it was, and set to work as he had never worked in all his life before—­against time.

He had thrown in the earth loosely, taking care to leave the head exposed, for he felt as sure as he did of his own existence that life was not yet extinct in the body of the young girl for whom he was forced to prepare that grave at the point of a revolver in the hands of the two desperate strangers.

He had taken his own life in his hands when he had announced the work finished satisfactorily, for had the man stepped from the coach to examine the work he would have found the deep hole which left the head uncovered.

The cold winds and the drifting snow blew into the old grave digger’s face, but he worked on with desperate zeal, realizing that another life might depend upon the swiftness of his rescue.

At last, after what seemed to him an eternity of time, he reached the body, and quickly lifted it from its resting place.

Half an hour later he reached his own humble cottage home, bearing the slender burden in his strong arms.

His good wife had waited up for him.  She could never sleep when Adam was away from home.

She heard his footstep on the crunching snow and hastened to open the door for him, starting back with a cry of great surprise as she caught sight of the figure in his arms.

“Is it some neighbor’s little girl lost in the storm, Adam?” she cried, clasping her hands together in affright.

“Don’t ask any questions now, Mary,” he exclaimed, delivering the burden into her willing, motherly arms, and sinking down into the nearest chair, thoroughly exhausted.  “I’ll tell you all about it later, when I get my breath and my nerves are settled.  Do everything you can to revive the poor young creature.  She is freezing to death.”