"Uncle Philip! Philip Alston!" she cried again and again. "Don't you
know me? It's Ruth."
"Here, I'm coming!" a man's voice shouted out of the distance. "Where
are you? Speak again. Let me find you by the sound."
"They have killed him!" she shrieked. "I can't find him in the dark."
She was out of the saddle now, bending down and groping with her
shaking, tender little hands on the torn and trampled earth. A wilder
gust of wind brought the beat of rapidly retreating hoofs to her
strained ears. She sprang up with a new fear and cried it aloud high and
far above the shriek of the wind.
"They are taking him away! Will you never come? Is it you--uncle Philip?
Oh--why--don't you come to me? It's Ruth."
"It is I--Father Orin," said the priest near by.
She did not reply, nor even glance at him, although the cloud curtain
was now suddenly lifted again, and she could see clearly. She did not
notice that all the horsemen had vanished. She saw only the motionless
form of the man she loved lying some distance away. It was plain that he
had pressed the assassins as far from her as he could; that his
outstretched arms had fallen in some supreme effort.
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