might again sweep across her memory undenied. She felt his arms, his
kisses, heard his whispers against her cheek and smelled the perfume of
Madonna lilies.

She drew the curtain and opened the window noiselessly to the night.
Only a few hours ago she had been singing to her harp in what
wretchedness! She laughed softly to herself. The quiet night was full of
his voice: "I love you! I want nothing but you!" How her pitiful error
had tortured and wrung them both! But to-morrow he, too, would know that
all was well.

A clear sound chimed across the distance--the bell of the court-house
clock, striking midnight. _One!_... _Two!_... How often lately it had
rung discordantly across her mood; now it seemed a clamant watcher,
tolling joy. _Three!_... _Four!_... _Five!_... Perhaps he was sleepless,
listening, too. Was he in the old library, thinking of her? _Six!_...
_Seven!_... _Eight!_... _Nine!_... If she could only send her message to
him on the bells! _Ten!_... It swelled more loudly now, more deliberate.
_Eleven!_... Another day was almost gone. _Twelve!_... "Joy cometh in
the morning"--ran the whisper across her thought. It was morning now.

_Thirteen!_

She caught a sharp breath. Her ear had not deceived her--the vibration
still palpitated on the air like a heart of sound. It had struck
thirteen! A little eery touch crept along her nerves and a cool dampness
broke on her skin, for she seemed to hear, quavering through the
wondering silence, the voice of Mad Anthony, as it had quavered to her
ear on the door-step of the negro cabin, with the well-sweep throwing
its long curved shadow across the group of laughing faces:

"Ah sees yo' gwine ter him. Ah heahs de co'ot-house clock a-strikin' in
de night--en yo' gwine.... Don' wait, don' wait, li'l mistis, er de
trouble-cloud gwine kyah him erway f'om yo'.... When de clock strike
thuhteen--when de clock strike thuhteen--"

She dropped the flowered curtain and drew back. A weird fancy had begun
to press on her brain. Had not Mad Anthony foretold truly what had gone
before? What if there were some cryptic meaning in this, too? To go to
him, at midnight, by a lonely country road--she, a girl? Incredible! Yet
her mind had opened to a vague growing fear that was swiftly mounting to
a thriving anxiety. That innate superstition, secretly cherished while
derided, which is the heritage of the Southron-born bred from centuries
of contact with a mystical race, had her in its gri