and this was his reward. This--that the woman he loved had hurled
the first stone at the mere lifting of a Pharisaical finger--that she
had loved him and had turned from him when the first word was
uttered--as she would not have turned from the brother of her blood had
he been damned in Holy Writ. It was for this that he hated her.

The light of the sunset shining through the wood fell dull gold on his
pathway. A strong wind was blowing among the trees, and the dried leaves
were torn from the boughs and hurled roughly to the earth, when they
sped onward to rest against the drifts by the roadside. The sound of the
wind was deep and hoarse like the baying of distant hounds, and beneath
it, in plaintive minor, ran the sighing of the leaves before his
footsteps. Through the wood came the vague smells of autumn--a
reminiscent waft of decay, the reek of mould on rotting logs, the
effluvium of overblown flowers, the healthful smack of the pines. By
dawn frost would grip the vegetation and the wind would lull; but now it
blew, strong and clear, scattering before it withered growths and subtle
scents of death.

Out of the wood, Nicholas came on the highway again, and turned to where
the afterglow burnished the windows of Kingsborough. He followed the
road instinctively--as he had followed it daily from his childhood up,
beating out the impression of his own footsteps in the dust,
obliterating his old, even tracks by the reckless tramp of his delirium.

When he reached the college grounds he paused from the same dazed
impulse and looked back upon the west through the quiet archway of the
long brick building. The place was desolate with the desolation of
autumn. Through the funereal arch he saw the sunset barred by a network
of naked branches, while about him the darkening lawn was veiled with
the melancholy drift of the leaves. The only sound of life came from a
brood of turkeys settling to roost in a shivering aspen.

He turned and walked rapidly up the main street, where a cloud of dust
hung suspended. Past the court-house, across the green, past the little
whitewashed gaol, where in a happier season roses bloomed--out into the
open country where the battlefields were grim with headless corn
rows--he walked until he could walk no further, and then wheeled about
to retrace heavily his way. His rage was spent; his pulses faltered from
fatigue, and the red flashes faded from before his eyes.

When he reached home supper was ov