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Evan, who was esteemed a wag among the mountain fair, advanced, as if to secure a similar favour; but Alice, snatching up her basket, escaped up the rocky bank as fleetly as a roe, and, turning round and laughing, called something out to him in Gaelic, which he answered in the same tone and language; then, waving her hand to Edward, she resumed her road, and was soon lost among the thickets, though they continued for some time to hear her lively carol, as she proceeded gaily on her solitary journey.
Climbing fleetly up through steep and tangled slopes, and running as fleetly down; crossing a brawling little stream on a slender trunk of fallen poplar; the girl hastened on her mission. Her lungs drank the clear air in regular tireless draughts. Once only, she stopped and drew back.
There was something so thoroughly savage in the manner of these expressions, and the looks and gestures by which they were accompanied, that her great fear of him gave her new strength, and enabled her by a sudden effort to extricate herself and run fleetly from him.
Vetch had sprung overboard, and run fleetly as a deer to the shore, and though the negroes on the cliff sped after him with yells, they had a round of half a mile to go over rough ground, and could not catch him.
They had fallen back in the darkness, and prudently abstaining from breakfast, I galloped northward, as if the whole Confederate army was at my heels. These old turnpike roads were now marked by daily chases and rencontres. A few Virginians, fleetly mounted, would provoke pursuit from a squad of Federals, and the latter would be led into ambuscades.
And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my departing step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and endearments their temporary loss has taught me to value more and more. Yet that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my conduct and the readiness of my services shall ere long aptly illustrate.
They had never run so fleetly or so silently before. A single glance had revealed the figures of two men approaching the prison-house from the beach. Not for worlds would the girls have been discovered hammering at their door. They had crossed the island to ask for succor. They needed friends. Suppose these men had seen them trying to break into their house?
Now as Beltane stood thus, gazing down at the winding road whose white dust was already mellowing to evening, he beheld one who ran wondrous fleetly despite the ragged cloak that flapped about his long legs, and whose rough-shod feet spurned the dust beneath them so fast 'twas a marvel to behold; moreover as he ran, he bounded hither and thither, and with every bound an arrow sped by him from where, some distance behind, ran divers foresters bedight in a green livery Beltane thought he recognized; but even as Beltane grasped the branches that screened him, minded to swing himself up to the fellow's aid, the fugitive turned aside from the road and came leaping up the slope, but, of a sudden, uttered a loud cry and throwing up his hands fell face down upon the ling and so lay, what time came up one of the pursuers that had outstripped his fellows, but as he paused, his sword shortened for the thrust, up sprang the fugitive, a great axe flashed and whirled and fell, nor need was there for further stroke.
She knew at this hour she would find him by his wide doorstep. Fleetly, her bare feet scarcely touching the soft earth, she covered the distance to his house. She ran up behind him and slipped her fingers over his half-closed eyes. He knew the familiar touch of the girl's hands. He patted them with his own and moved aside on his bench that she might sit down with him.
They went on, penetrating a lifeless silence; their horse's feet making the first prints since early morning in the unbroken smoothness of the way, and the only sound the gentle tinkle of their own bells, as they moved pleasantly, but not fleetly, along. So, up the ascent, where the land lay higher, toward the hills.
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