I lay panting, with eyes closed, hardly realizing that I was indeed alive.
Slowly, throb by throb, my heart came back into regularity of beat, and my brain into command.

My eyes opened, and I shuddered with horror, as I recognized that dismal opening into the side of the hill.

Clinging to the tree trunk I attained my feet, still swaying from weakness, and was thus able to glance about over the edge of the bank, and gain some conception of my immediate surroundings.
It was early dawn, the eastern sky that shade of pale gray which precedes the sun, a few, white, fleecy clouds sailing high above, already tinged with red reflection.

I must have been in that earth prison since the morning of the previous day; it seemed longer, yet even that expiration of time proved that those who had imprisoned me there had left me to die.
God! I couldn't believe that--not of her! Clear as the evidence appeared, I yet fought down the thought bitterly, creeping on hands and knees over the edge of the bank, to where I could sit on the grass, and gaze about in the growing light.

The house was to the left, an apple orchard between, and a low fence enclosing a garden.