Her head became light and giddy, and now it seemed to her that the blackness was peopled with wild, living creatures that dashed about her, touching her, plucking at her with their fingers, pressing against and hurrying past her in an orgy of stampeding movement. She felt the cold, gusty breathing of the wet things as they slid and buffeted their way through the forest. They whispered into her ears strange, sad tidings of Denis and of her child; they bellowed loudly in her father's tones and wailed like her mother. Every sound about
her she construed into the weird and incoherent speech of these visionary beings. At intervals she knew she was going mad, that no forms surrounded her. that she was alone, deserted, forgotten in the wood, but as she staggered on, her mind again became obscured, clouded by the visions of her terror.
Suddenly, when it seemed as though she must completely lose her reason, she paused in a kind of numb wonder. She raised her tortured eyes upwards to the sky and beheld the moon, a thin crescent, pale and without radiance, which lay flat upon its back amongst the banked clouds, as though the gale had blown it over. She saw it only for a moment, then it was obscured by the racing clouds, but she
observed that the wind now came upon her in one direct, tearing line of motion, that she no longer felt the hard trunks of the firs.
She was out of the wood! She sobbed with relief, and immediately ran blindly to escape from it and from the gibbering creatures it contained. She had lost the road, together with all sense of her bearings, and the instinct of flight alone impelled her as, with a crouching, stumbling motion, she hastened anywhere. The wind was now assisting her, lifting her from her feet and lengthening her shambling steps. She was in some kind of field and long, dank grasses whipped
her legs as she slid forward upon the soft turf. It was not cultivated land, for she passed amongst clumps of bracken, slipped and stumbled against half -buried, moss-grown boulders, and ripped through clusters of bramble bush; but she was now beyond logical thought and did not pause to deduce her whereabouts from the nature of the country she traversed.
Then, all at once, amongst the tumult, she became aware of a deep, sonorous cadence, which, as she went on, grew louder, and swelled to the roar of rushing water. It was the sound of a broad river, swollen to overflowing, and so engorged by turbid waters that its rushing turbulence sounded in her ears like the resonance of a cataract. With every step she took, this sound grew louder till it seemed as though the river, glutted with the debris of the uplands, advanced menacingly upon her, bearing, unseen amongst the seething waters, palings and fencing, the wreckage of a dozen bridges, whole tree trunks and the
bodies of dead sheep and cattle.
She was upon its very brink before she understood that it was the Leven; the same Leven which had sung to her so softly with its lilting purl, which had added to the rapture of Denis and herself as, meandering past, it had serenaded their love. Now, like herself, it was altered beyond recognition. The moon was still obscured and nothing was visible to her, but as she stood terrified, listening upon the high, exposed bank, for an instant, in her fearful extremity, she was tempted to let herself slide into these invisible, booming waters below, to forget and be forgotten. A shudder ran through her bruised body as she repulsed the thought. Like a command to live came the thought that, no matter what happened, she still had Denis. She must live for Denis, and now she felt him beckoning to her. She turned abruptly from the sound as though to cut off its appeal but, as she moved, in the careless hurry of her recoil, her wet shoe slipped, she stumbled, her foot again slithered on the surface of a greasy clod and she shot feet first down the steep slope. Her hands clutched desperately at the short grass and rushes of the bank, but the weeds that she grasped broke immediately in her clasp or uprooted easily from the wet soil. Her feet tore two furrows in the yielding clay as she dug them fiercely into it in a fruitless effort to save herself. With her arms she clung to the wet bank, but she found nothing to retard her descent.
The smooth surface of the declivity was as steep and treacherous as that of a glacier and, instead of arresting her fall, these frantic movement: inly served to increase her speed. She was precipitated with irresistible momentum into the unseen river below. She entered the water with a soundless splash and immediately sank down amongst the long water weeds which grew from the bottom, whilst water rushed into her lungs as she gasped from shock and terror.
The force of the current drove her body rapidly along the river bed, amongst the entangling grasses, and swept her downstream for thirty yards before she came at last to the surface.
She could not swim but, instinctively, with the effort of preservation, she made a few, feeble, despairing strokes, trying to keep her head above the surface of the water. It was impossible. The intense spate of the torrent had raised a series of high, undulating waves which swept repeatedly over her, and finally a swirling undertow caught her legs and sucked her down. This time she remained under so long that her senses almost left her. Bells rang in her ears, her lungs were ballooned, her eyeballs bursting; red stabs of light danced before her; she was suffocating. But she came once more to the surface and, as she emerged, inert and half insensible, the end of a floating log of wood was flung by a wave into her right armpit. Unconsciously, she seized it and feebly clasped it against her. She floated. Her body was submerged, her hair streaming behind her
in the current, but her face lay above water and, with great, gasping breaths, she filled and refilled her chest with air. With all feeling suspended but the necessity of respiration, she clung to the log, amidst the strange flotsam that dashed every now and then against her, and was borne rapidly down the river. Her rate of movement was so great that, as consciousness returned to her more fully, she realised that, if she did not quickly reach the bank, she would soon be swept amongst the sharp rocks which spiked the rapids that lay immediately above Levenford. With the remains of her strength, and still clinging to the log, she kicked out with her legs. The cold of the river water was infinitely more cutting than of the rain, cutting from the frigidity of an ice-crusted, snow-capped mountain source and from the added chill of tributary hill streams fed by melted snow. This cold pierced to the marrow of Mary's bones; her limbs lost all sensation and, although her legs moved feebly at the command of her will, she did not feel them stir. The air, too, had become so frigid that hailstones began to fall. They were large pellets, hard as stone, sharp as icicles, that churned the water like shot and bounced off the log like bullets. They rained mercilessly upon Mary's face and head, bruising her eyes, whipping her cheeks and cutting her lower lip. Because she must hold the log so grimly with both her
hands she could not shield herself and she was compelled to suffer this pitiless, pelting shower, unprotected. Her teeth chattered; her wounded hand was seared and freezing; dreadful cramps seized her middle; she felt she was perishing from the cold. The immersion in the glacial water was killing her. At that moment, as she struggled towards the bank, a single thought obsessed her not of herself or of Denis, but of the child within her. A compelling instinct suddenly flowered within her as though a message, passing by some strange communication between the child and her own being, had suddenly told her that, if she did not quickly get out of the water, it must die.