the occasion demanded. So much was clear; but the rest was blurred, a
medley of incoherences, a waking nightmare.

Oddly enough, it never occurred to her that a woman might be lying in
that dreary tenement. Her first vague imagining suggested that Bower
had committed a crime, killed a man, and that an avenger had dragged
him to his victim's last resting place. That Stampa was laboriously
plodding through the marriage ritual was a fantastic conceit of which
she received no hint. There was nothing to dissolve the mist in her
mind. She could only wait, and marvel.

As the strange scene drew to its close, she became calmer. She
reflected that some sort of registry would be kept of the graves. A
few dismal monuments, and two rows of little black wooden crosses that
stuck up mournfully out of the snow, gave proof positive of that. She
counted the crosses. Stampa was standing near the seventh from a tomb
easily recognizable at some future time. Bower faced it on his knees.
She could not see him distinctly, as he was hidden by the other man's
broad shoulders; but she did not regret it, because the warm brown
tints of her furs against the background of snow and foliage might
warn him of her presence. She thanked the kindly stars that brought
her here. No matter what turn events took now, she hoped to hold the
whip hand over Bower. There was a mystery to be cleared, of course;
but with such materials she could hardly fail to discover its true
bearings.

So she watched, in tremulous patience, quick to note each movement of
the actors in a drama the like to which she had never seen on the
stage.

At last Bower slunk away. She heard the crunching of his feet on the
snow, and, when Stampa ceased his silent prayer, she expected that he
would depart by the same path. To her overwhelming dismay, he wheeled
round and looked straight at her. In reality his eyes were fixed on
the hills behind her. He was thinking of his unhappy daughter. The
giant mass of Corvatsch was associated in his mind with the girl's
last glimpse of her beloved Switzerland, while on that same memorable
day it threw its deep shadow over his own life. He turned to the
mountain to seek its testimony,--as it were, to the consummation of a
tragedy.

But Millicent could not know that. Losing all command of herself, she
shrieked in terror, and ran wildly among the trees. She stumbled and
fell before she had gone five yards over the rough ground. Quite in a
panic, co