of the sky
above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the
mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul.
After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past
hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity
only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe
beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening
onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to
be a law unto himself.

A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet
he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them
mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told
him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and
away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at
them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from
things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was
over and done with.

It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards
in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the
protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was
as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer--zigzagging
down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on
the east--had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of
lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the
waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second
such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range
of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the
canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating
her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed
scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on
the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the
boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the
lake, of his right to the world.

His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle
forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories
to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place,
minute by minute, to the confidence in himsel