rette.

The old cathedral takes up a square. In the niches of its outer wall
stand the stone effigies of many saints. Before its triple,
iron-studded doors stretches a tiled terrace. At its right runs a
side-street, and, attracted by a patch of clambering vine on the
time-stained walls, where the moon fell full upon them, Saxon turned
into the byway. At the far end, the facade rose blankly, fronting a
bare drill-ground, and there he halted. The painter had not counted on
the moon. Now, as he took his place against the wall, it bathed him in
an almost effulgent whiteness. The shadows of the abutments were inky
in contrast, and the disused and ancient cannon, planted at the curb
for a corner post, stood out boldly in relief. But the street was
silent and, except for himself, absolutely deserted.

For a time, he stood looking outward. From somewhere at his back, in
the vaultlike recesses of the building, drifted the heavy pungency of
incense burning at a shrine.

His ears were alert for the sounds that might, in their drifting
inconsequence, mean everything. Then, as no reminder came, he closed
his eyes, and wracked his imagination in concentrated thought as a
monitor to memory. He groped after some detail of the other time, if
the other time had been an actual fragment of his life. He strove to
recall the features of the officer who commanded the death squad, some
face that had stood there before him on that morning; the style of
uniforms they wore. He kept his eyes closed, not only for seconds, but
for minutes, and, when in answer to his focused self-hypnotism and
prodding suggestion no answer came, there came in its stead a torrent
of joyous relief.

Then, he heard something like a subdued ejaculation, and opened his
eyes upon a startling spectacle.

Leaning out from the shadow of an abutment stood a thin man, whose
face in the moon showed a strange mingling of savagery and terror. It
was a face Saxon did not remember to have seen before. The eyes
glittered, and the teeth showed as the thin lips were drawn back over
them in a snarling sort of smile. But the most startling phase of the
tableau, to the man who opened his eyes upon it without warning, was
the circumstance of the unknown's pressing an automatic pistol
against his breast. Saxon's first impression was that he had fallen
prey to a robber, but he knew instinctively that this expression was
not that of a man bent on mere thievery. It had more depth and evi