untary movement,
while his face worked terribly between bewilderment and abandonment to
illusion. He tottered forward a few steps to the edge of the moonlight,
and stood peering at the approaching couple with a hand raised to shade
his eyes and a dazed, unearthly smile on his face. The girl saw him
first, for she had been gazing demurely before her, while her lover
looked only at her. At sight of the gray-haired man suddenly confronting
them with a look of bedlam, she shrieked and started back in terror.
Miss Rood, recalled to her senses, sprang forward, and catching Mr.
Morgan's arm endeavored with gentle force to draw him away.

But it was too late for that. The young man, at first almost as
much startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturally
experienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinary
interruption to his tete-a-tete, and stepped up to Mr. Morgan as if
about to inflict summary chastisement. But perceiving that he had to do
with an elderly man, he contented himself with demanding in a decidedly
aggressive tone what the devil he meant by such a performance.

Mr. Morgan stared at him without seeing him, and evidently did not take
in the words. He merely gasped once or twice, and looked as if he had
fainted away on his feet. His blank, stunned expression showed that his
faculties were momentarily benumbed by the shock. Miss Rood felt as if
she should die for the pity of it as she looked at his face, and her
heart was breaking for grief as she sought to mollify the young man with
some inarticulate words of apology, meanwhile still endeavoring to draw
Mr. Morgan away. But at this moment the girl, recovering from her panic,
came up to the group and laid her hand on the young man's arm, as if to
check and silence him. It was evident that she saw there was something
quite unusual in the circumstances, and the look which she bent upon Mr.
Morgan was one of sympathy and considerate interrogation. But Miss
Rood could see no way out of their awkward situation, which grew more
intolerable every moment as they thus confronted each other. It was
finally Mr. Morgan's voice, quite firm, but with an indescribable
sadness in the tones, which broke the silence: "Young people, I owe you
an apology, such as it is. I am an old man, and the past is growing so
heavy that it sometimes quite overbalances me. My thoughts have been
busy to-night with the days of my youth, and the spell of memory has
been so str