A NIGHTMARE JOURNEY
Ruth Fielding began to laugh and then to cry—her throat working
convulsively.
She forced her exhausted muscles to action again, ran, stumbled,
fell, and ran again, bruising arms and knees and shoulders without
knowing, without caring!
“Light! Light!” she cried over and over again, her voice weird and
smothered in that breathless place. “There is a way out. There is!”
But the beckoning light was cruelly deceptive. It seemed so near and
yet appeared ever to recede as Ruth’s eager hands groped toward it.
Several times she gave up the unequal struggle and sank to the
ground, with all the strength gone from her limbs.
Then up again and on, sometimes crawling on hands and knees,
sometimes struggling to an upright position and, by an almost
superhuman effort holding to it, staggering onward—upward—always
toward that summoning, faint glimmer of light.
At last, to lie within an arm’s throw of it, laughing, weeping,
hysterical, panting with exhaustion.
Then crawling, inch by inch, painfully, groping toward that tiny
aperture!
At last, face close to it, the pungent breath of the woods drawn deep
down into aching lungs!
Ruth rested for a while, gathering her depleted forces for the last
great effort, to drag herself up and through the opening.
Tired fingers groping, Ruth at last managed to gain a hold on the
roots and soft dirt about the edge of the hole. But her strength was
gone. The fearful knowledge came to her that she could not, unaided,
draw herself out of that dreadful place. Her fingers were growing
numb.
Suddenly the blue of the sky above her was blotted out. Still
clinging to the edge of the hole with what little strength was left
her, Ruth looked up.
A face was bending over her—the face of a girl on which was written
surprise and horror.
“Oh, help me!” begged Ruth. “I can’t hold on——”
“Give me your hand,” commanded the girl briskly. “Hold on with one
hand and try to help yourself while I pull. Here we go!”
There followed a heart-breaking moment of slipping and pulling when
it seemed that they both must fall into the pit together.
But the strange girl was strong and Ruth was desperate. One last,
hard pull, and Ruth found herself lying upon a bed of soft moss and
sweet-scented flowers.
She lay for a moment, panting, trying to regain her strength. Her
rescuer bent over her anxiously.
“Do you feel better?” asked the latter. “Can you—do you think you can
walk?”
“Of course,” returned Ruth, and struggled to her feet. She swayed
unsteadily and was amazed to find how weak she was.
The strange girl put a slender, strong young arm about her shoulders
and spoke with an air of quiet authority.
“You must come with me—please,” she said. “Our cabin is only a short
distance away. Look—there it is through the trees. There you can rest
until you are stronger and can tell me just what has happened.”
Ruth said no more, but allowed her new friend to lead her down a
narrow path that led to a small cottage. It was the rudest kind of
little dwelling, built, as even Ruth could see, by one who was an
amateur at such work. A lonely enough place, Ruth thought, to house
such a pretty young creature as this girl who walked beside her.
As they neared the house Ruth saw another figure framed in the
doorway.
Her new acquaintance must have followed the direction of her glance,
for she said quickly:
“My sister. We live here together.”
Ruth turned startled eyes upon the girl.
“Not alone?” she cried.
The girl nodded sadly.
“There is no one else since father died,” she said, and Ruth could
see the quick tears spring to her eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Ruth felt as though she had unwittingly put her
finger upon a throbbing wound.
She was glad that they had reached the house and so temporarily put
an end to conversation.
She found the other sister younger and more immature than the one
who had so luckily encountered her in the woods. She was a thin and
gangling girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, and not, at
first sight, so attractive as her sister. However, the younger sister
had a sweet face, and, Ruth thought, gave promise of beauty later on.
The sisters led Ruth eagerly into the one main room of the cabin.
Ruth was to learn later that there was a tiny sleeping apartment
partitioned off from this kitchen, dining room and sitting room
combined.
They seemed pitifully pleased at having a visitor and hovered over
her with such eagerness to serve that Ruth was quite won by them.
The older girl brought her a drink of refreshingly cold well water at
once, which Ruth drank gratefully.
Then the sisters coaxed her to let them give her a cup of tea and
perhaps a fried egg and a bit of bacon. But Ruth protested that she
was not in the least hungry and only needed a short rest before she
would be perfectly fit and able to start back to her friends.
“If you will show me the way,” she added, with her bright friendly
smile.
“Indeed we will. Although we would like so much to keep you with us.”
The younger of the two girls said this with a wistful tone and look.
It was pathetic, too, Ruth thought, to see how the younger of the two
girls leaned upon the strength and courage of the elder.
She was about to ask the sisters as tactfully as she could how it
happened that they were alone in this remote place when the older
girl forestalled her by asking a question of her own.
“If you don’t mind telling me,” she said gravely, “I’d like to know
what happened to you before I came along and helped you out of that
hole.”
“I fell into another hole!” said Ruth.
The sisters were mystified at that, and so Ruth explained the
harrowing circumstances that preceded the fortunate discovery of her
plight by this new friend.
The older girl listened with grave interest, while the younger
interrupted often with eager questions.
The latter would have kept Ruth talking of her own affairs
indefinitely, had not the young director adroitly switched the
conversation to a subject which had aroused her curiosity.
“I don’t want to appear to pry,” she said, with her pleasant smile.
“But I do feel that I owe a debt of gratitude to the young lady who
helped me out of a very bad scrape indeed. And how am I going to
express my gratitude,” she added gayly, “when I don’t even know the
young lady’s name?”
The older girl smiled at this—a slow, grave smile that seemed
characteristic of her.
“I am sorry,” she said. “We should have told you before. I am Mary
Chase and this is my sister, Ellen.”