straight off to one who now was the main object of
them. Where was he at that moment? Returning to her, travelling at all
speed over a peril-haunted region to return to her, alone perhaps, as he
had hinted might be the case; and more than one unspoken prayer went up
that it might not be so, or for his safety if it were. Then her
recollections went farther back. She recalled many to whom she stood in
the same light as she now did to that one--from their point of view,
that is--yet none had succeeded in stirring her heart, in causing her
pulses to beat quicker, or, if so, for no more than a moment, so to say.
She recalled many an impassioned pleading, many a haggard face,
grief-stricken, disappointed, down to that of Lambert only the other
day, and wondered if they had felt as she would feel were any evil to
overtake that one now. How cold, how callous, how inconsiderate she had
been to others, she recognised now; and as her thoughts turned to him
she felt that, but for the certainty of seeing him again, of all the
blissfulness of their reunion, and that in a day or two at the furthest,
her life would have been lived--lived and done with for all time.

The house was in dead silence, as in the solitude of her room at last
she began to prepare for bed. She had just finished brushing out the
thick waves of her hair, when a dull rumble, as of many feet, not far
from the window, turned her pale and tottering. Her heart beat like a
hammer, and the splendid outlines of her breast, now uncovered, rose and
fell with the quick regularity of the roll of surf upon a level beach.
Then with the stamping tread there arose a low moaning noise, long-drawn
and unspeakably dismal in the dead midnight silence.

"What a despicable coward I am!" she exclaimed, now with a faint smile.
Then, with a glance at her magnificent limbs, "I am large framed, and
strong, yet the least little thing makes me quake and quiver like a
scared child."

She threw open the shutters, and, as she did so, again went up that
unearthly, deep-throated moaning, ending in a short shrill bellow. But
she knew the sound. The cattle had returned about the homestead, and
were collecting at the spot where a sheep or goat was daily slaughtered
for the use of the household and the farm hands. In the faint moonlight
she could see the beasts bunched together, their noses down to the
blood-soaked spot, sniffing and pawing up the ground as they emitted
their dismal mutt