ened. What shall it do, David? Tell it! Shall it fly?"

"I also am too bewildered to act and almost too bewildered to think," he
said with unaffected excitement and anxiety, for now that the time and
opportunity for him to take so momentous a step had come, his heart
failed him. It was only with the most violent effort and under a most
pressing necessity that he pulled himself together and continued,

"The little bird must fly, and its mate must fly with it. There are too
few hours before daylight and we must not lose a single one. But are you
sure that you are quite ready? Is your mind made up? Will you go with me
trustfully? Will you accept whatever the future has in store?"

She took him in her strong young arms, printed her first kiss upon his
lips, and said: "I will go with you to the ends of the earth! I will go
with you through water and through fire! The future cannot bring me
anything from which I shall shrink, if it lets us meet it hand in
hand!"

Silently and swiftly they gathered together the few necessities of a
sudden journey, stole out of the quiet building and hurried away to a
livery stable. In a few moments they were rattling down the rough
cobble-stone pavement to the river. The ferryman, who had been retained
for this very purpose, pretended to be asleep. They aroused him, drove
onto the platform of his primitive craft and floated out upon the
stream. As the boat swung clear of the shore they heard music issuing
from the cabin windows of a steamer under whose stern they were passing.
It was the "Mary Ann." They listened. The music ceased for a moment and
a deep voice called out "B-b-bravo! Another song!"

They recognized it instantly, and Pepeeta pressed close to the side of
her lover.

"You hear it for the last time," he whispered.

"Thank God," she said.

That name uttered in the darkness of the night startled him. The idea
that he had cast a shuttle of crime into the great loom upon which the
fabric of his life was being woven, took complete possession of his
mind. With unerring prescience, he saw that it began to be entangled in
the mysterious meshes. A consciousness that he was no longer the master
but the victim of his destiny seized him and he shuddered. Pepeeta
perceived the shudder through the arm which embraced her.

"You are cold, my love," she said.

"My joy has made me tremble," he replied.

She pressed the hand which was holding hers and looked up into his face
with ineffab