CHAPTER XI
The Red-Black Trail
A DEEP swoon is the anesthetic that Mother Nature offers her children when horror or pain becomes too great for bearing. Cliona’s faint of terror passed into natural sleep, and when she at last opened her eyes the goblin-be-friendly moon had been ousted by the honest sun, and the room was yellow-bright with reflected light from a morning all cheer and sunshine.
She became aware that a small tongue was l*****g at her face, and that someone was pounding lustily on the locked door. For a moment her brain refused any explanation of why she should be crouching there on the rug, with a joyful puppy wriggling beside her.
“Mrs. Rhodes! Mrs. Rhodes, ma’am! Oh, my God, are you killed?”
The veil lifted from Cliona’s memory, and shaking off Snookums she struggled
