He stood like the hare when the dogs are approaching
from all sides. And he ran like a hare, back and forth about that
moonlit space, before he could make up his mind to go into the
dark stable for a horse. The thought of going into a doorway was
terrible to him. He caught Emil's horse by the bit and led it out.
He could not have buckled a bridle on his own. After two or three
attempts, he lifted himself into the saddle and started for Hanover.
If he could catch the one o'clock train, he had money enough to
get as far as Omaha.
While he was thinking dully of this in some less sensitized part
of his brain, his acuter faculties were going over and over the
cries he had heard in the orchard. Terror was the only thing that
kept him from going back to her, terror that she might still be
she, that she might still be suffering. A woman, mutilated and
bleeding in his orchard--it was because it was a woman that he
was so afraid. It was inconceivable that he should have hurt a
woman. He would rather be eaten by wild beasts than see her move
on the ground as she had moved in the orchard.
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