All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 133: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LOVE GOES BLINDLY. in the droshky and hurry out of this dreadful wood!” Her companion tried to dissemble his uneasiness by a nervous laugh. ** You must be mistaken, child,” said he. ‘“ There seems to be nothing here.” He turned to unhobble the horses, and as he did so Vera heard the leaves rustle on the other side of the clear- ing. A pair of burning eyes met her stricken stare, and, almost ere the shriek of warning had escaped her lips, Count Nikolai had seized her around the waist and bounded into the shelter of the trees behind them. Both were breathless and aquiver. “It was Tomasz—it was ‘Tomasz, with fearful, glaring eyes!” shivered the girl. ‘ They have overtaken us! We are lost!” Count Nikolai’s lips set grimly into a straight line. Holding her by one hand, he dodged away from the dan- gerous proximity from tree-trunk to tree-trunk. He kept his eyes and pistol directed in the direction whence they fled. Then came a crackle in the under- brush to their left, and the fugitives changed their course, only to be ab- ruptly halted a few seconds later by similar sounds both before them and on their right hand. “ Trapped! ”’ snarled Count Nikolai, baring his white teeth like a wild ani- mal at bay. The cordon was closing in round them. ‘The man and the girl crouched down among the wet foliage and waited. Then all sounds of pursuit ceased and an ominous quict again reigned. They hid there ten, fifteen, twenty minutes—hours long it seemed to them —and heard nothing. It was nerve- racking, unbearable! In a frenzy the nobleman leaped to his feet and bel- lowed for them to come at him—to dare lay a finger-tip on him, a boyar of the empire. Then they came—nine of them all told, though seeming to be a score or more by reason of the fantasy of those 843 eery surroundings. They came. They stamped, gnashed teeth, spat guttural curses, clenched, clawed. - The count’s pistol snapped in their contorted faces, but did not explode. He had forgotten to reload it after shooting Janos the boarhound. He felt huge, sinewy arms strain terrifically round him until his ribs seemed caving inward. One peasant, trampled under foot, screamed horribly and sank his teeth into the calf of the battling nobleman’s leg. Old Yakof was pulling out the count’s mustache by the roots. With his stubby thumbs some one else tried to gouge out Nikolai laroslaf’s eyes. Down went the fighting man, with his snarling aggressors heaped upon him. The heart-breaking pressure upon his ribs never relaxed. Foul breath was hot on his face. His jaws hung open as he gasped for breath and tore frantically at the ears, noses, and hair on faces which his blurring eyes could no longer distin- euish. Faintly, as if from a great dis- tance, he heard appalling shrieks in a voice that he seeméd to know. He was. suffocating. His brain worked slowly but very methodically. Where had he heard that voice be- fore? It was not that of the Princess Xenia; could it be that of the dashing Mile. Alix Petrovna, to whom imen bowed all along the Nevsky Prospekt? Then there was— Ah! the little peasant girl with the eyes blue as corn-flowers and the charming smile—the child who so liked to have him— “ Vera,’ wheezed the prostrate man, and wondered at the murky haze that was aswim before his eyes. “ Vera.” V. ConscIousNEss returned to Vera, the betrothed, with a rush, the horror and devastation of which was like the sweep of a tidal wave. She was literally submerged through comiicloooks.com