gn. The long, straight paths were barnacled
with weeds; the dense, fine hedges, once prim and angular, had fattened
out of all shape or form; and on the velvet sward of other days you
might have waded waist high in rotten hay. Towards the garden end this
rank jungle merged into a worse wilderness of rhododendrons, the tallest
I have ever seen. On all this the white moon smiled, and the grim house
glowered, to the eternal swirl and rattle of the beck beyond its walls.

Long enough I stood where I had dropped, listening with all my being
for some other sound; but at last that great studded door creaked
and shivered on its ancient hinges, and I heard voices arguing in the
Portuguese tongue. It was poor Eva wheedling that black rascal Jose.
I saw her in the lighted porch; the nigger I saw also, shrugging and
gesticulating for all the world like his hateful master; yet giving in,
I felt certain, though I could not understand a word that reached me.

And indeed my little mistress very soon sailed calmly out, followed by
final warnings and expostulations hurled from the step: for the black
stood watching her as she came steadily my way, now raising her head to
sniff the air, now stooping to pluck up a weed, the very picture of a
prisoner seeking the open air for its own sake solely. I had a keen eye
apiece for them as I cowered closer to the wall, revolver in hand. But
ere my love was very near me (for she would stand long moments gazing
ever so innocently at the moon), her jailer had held a bottle to the
light, and had beaten a retreat so sudden and so hasty that I expected
him back every moment, and so durst not stir. Eva saw me, however,
and contrived to tell me so without interrupting the air that she was
humming as she walked.

"Follow me," she sang, "only keep as you are, keep as you are, close to
the wall, close to the wall."

And on she strolled to her own tune, and came abreast of me without
turning her head; so I crept in the shadow (my ugly weapon tucked out of
sight), and she sauntered in the shine, until we came to the end of
the garden, where the path turned at right angles, running behind the
rhododendrons; once in their shelter, she halted and beckoned me, and
next instant I had her hands in mine.

"At last!" was all that I could say for many a moment, as I stood there
gazing into her dear eyes, no hero in my heroic hour, but the bigger
love-sick fool than ever. "But quick--quick--quick!" I added, as she
b