wart the door," he said doubtingly. "Is it
in the nature of a challenge?"

Haward took the dart, and examined it curiously. "The trader grows
troublesome," he remarked. "He must back to the woods and to the foes of
his own class." As he spoke he broke the arrow in two, and flung the
pieces from him.

It was a night of many stars and a keen wind. Moved each in his degree by
its beauty, Haward and MacLean stood regarding it before they should go,
the one back to his solitary chamber, the other to the store which was to
be his charge no longer than the morrow. "I feel the air that blows from
the hills," said the Highlander. "It comes over the heather; it hath swept
the lochs, and I hear it in the sound of torrents." He lifted his face to
the wind. "The breath of freedom! I shall have dreams to-night."

When he was gone, Haward, left alone, looked for a while upon the heights
of stars. "I too shall dream to-night," he breathed to himself. "To-morrow
all will be well." His gaze falling from the splendor of the skies to the
swaying trees, gaunt, bare, and murmuring of their loss to the hurrying
river, sadness and vague fear took sudden possession of his soul. He spoke
her name over and over; he left the house and went into the garden. It was
the garden of the dying year, and the change that in the morning he had
smiled to see now appalled him. He would have had it June again. Now, when
on the morrow he and Audrey should pass through the garden, it must be
down dank and leaf-strewn paths, past yellow and broken stalks, with here
and there wan ghosts of flowers.

He came to the dial, and, bending, pressed his lips against the carven
words that, so often as they had stood there together, she had traced with
her finger. "Love! thou mighty alchemist!" he breathed. "Life! that may
now be gold, now iron, but never again dull lead! Death"--He paused; then,
"There shall be no death," he said, and left the withered garden for the
lonely, echoing house.

CHAPTER XXIV

AUDREY COMES TO WESTOVER

It was ten of the clock upon this same night when Hugon left the glebe
house. Audrey, crouching in the dark beside her window, heard him bid the
minister, as drunk as himself, good-night, and watched him go unsteadily
down the path that led to the road. Once he paused, and made as if to
return; then went on to his lair at the crossroads ordinary. Again Audrey
waited,--this time by the door. Darden stumbled upstairs to bed. Mistress