the
field of silver radiance cast by the moon. No one passed. He could
not see a window-light in any of the houses. Everybody had gone to
the wedding, and the place was like a deserted village. Anderson felt
unutterably lonely. He felt outside of all the happy doors and
windows of life. Discontent was not his failing, but all at once the
evil spirit swept over him. He seemed to realize that instead of
moving in the broad highway trod by humanity he was on his own little
side-path to the tomb, and injury and anger seized him. He thought of
the man who was being married so short a distance away, and envy in a
general sense, with no reference even to Charlotte, swept over him.
He had never been disturbed in very great measure with longing for
the happiness that the other man was laying hold of, but even that
fact served to augment his sense of injury and resentment. He felt
that it was due to circumstances, in a very large degree to the
inevitable decrees of his fate, that he had not had the longing, and
not to any inherent lack of his own nature. He felt that he had had a
double loss in both the hunger and the satisfaction of it, and now,
after all, had come at last this absurd and hopeless affection which
had lately possessed him. To-night the affection, instead of seeming
to warm the heart of a nobly patient and reasonable man, seemed to
sting it.

Suddenly out of the hot murk of the night came a little puff of cool
wind, and borne on it a faint strain of music. Anderson listened. The
music came again.

"It cannot be possible that the wedding is just about to begin," he
thought, "not at this hour."

But that was quite possible with the Carrolls, who, with the
exception of the head of the family, had never been on time in their
lives. It was nearly nine o'clock, and the guests had been sitting in
a subdued impatience amid the wilting flowers and greens in the
church, and the minister had been trying to keep in a benedictory
frame of mind in a stuffy little retiring-room, and now the
wedding-party were just entering the church. A sudden impulse seized
Anderson. He stole inside the house, and looked and listened in the
hall. Everything was dark up-stairs, and silent. Mrs. Anderson always
fell asleep like a baby immediately upon going to bed.

Anderson got his hat from the hall-tree, and went out, closing the
door with its spring-lock very cautiously. Then he slipped around the
house and listened. He could hear a sof