“Maurice!” she called.  “Maurice!” The branches over the roof began to move and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp fire went out, as if an extinguisher had covered it.  She stood in the doorway for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly the wind bore the little flame away!—­then seemed to grip her, and twist her about, and beat her back into the house.  In her terror she screamed his name; and as she did so, another flash of lightning showed her his figure, motionless on the ground.

“He is dead” she said to herself, in a whisper.  “What shall I do?” Then, suddenly, she knew what to do:  she remembered that she had noticed a lantern hanging on the wall near the door; and now something impelled her to get it.  In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way to it, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches, groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair—­and clutched at the match box!  Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of flame,—­the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!—­running!—­running!—­toward that still figure by the deadened fire.  Just before she reached it a twig rolled under her foot, and she said, “A snake,”—­but she did not flinch.  As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, with its instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her a streak of blood on Maurice’s face....  He had tripped and fallen, and his head had struck one of the blackened stones.

“He is dead,” she said again, aloud.  She put the lantern on the ground and knelt beside him; she had an idea that she should place her hand on his heart to see if he were alive.  “He isn’t,” she told herself; but she laid her fingers, which were shaking so that she could not unfasten his coat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was any pulse; she knew nothing, except that he was “dead.”  She said this in a whisper, over and over.  “He is dead.  He is dead.”  The rain came down in torrents; the trees creaked and groaned in the wind; twice there were flashes of lightning and appalling roars of thunder.  Maurice was perfectly still.  The smoky glimmer of the lantern played on the thin streak of blood and made it look as though it was moving—­trickling—­

Then Eleanor began to think:  “There ought to be a doctor....”  If she left him, to bring help, he might bleed to death before she could get back to him.  Instantly, as she said that, she knew that she did not believe that he was dead!  She knew that she had hope.  With hope, a single thought possessed her. She must take him down the mountain.... But how?  She could not carry him;—­she had managed to prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully, on his breast—­but she knew that to carry him would be impossible.  And Lion was not there!  “I couldn’t have harnessed him if he were,” she thought.