e the locked door, its sickly flame showing
bruise-like through smoky streakings of lamp-black. At one side, in the
shadow, was his bag, and beside it the tethered bulldog--sole spot of
white against the melancholy forlornness--lying with one splinted leg,
like a swaddled ramrod, sticking straight out before him.

In the saddle, Valiant struck his hand hard against his knee. Surely it
was a dream! It could not be that he was leaving Virginia, leaving
Damory Court, leaving _her_! But he knew that it was not a dream.

Far away, rounding Powhattan Mountain, he heard the long-drawn hoot of
the coming train, flinging its sky-warning in a host of scampering
echoes. Among them mixed another sound far up the desolate road, coming
nearer--the sound of a horse, galloping fast and hard.

His own fidgeted, flung up wide nostrils and neighed shrilly. Who was
coming along that runnelled highway at such an hour in such breakneck
fashion?

The train was nearer now; he could hear its low rumbling hum, rising to
a roar, and the click and spring of the rails. But though he lifted a
foot from the stirrup, he did not dismount. Something in the whirlwind
speed of that coming caught and held him motionless. He had a sudden
curious feeling that all the world beside did not exist; there were
only the sweeping rush of the nearing train--impersonal, unhuman--he,
sitting his horse in the gloom, and that unknown rider whose anguish
of speed outstripped the steam, riding--to whom?

The road skirted the track as it neared the station, and all at once a
white glare from the opened fire-box flung itself blindingly across the
dark, illuminating like a flare of summer lightning the patch of highway
and the rider. Valiant, staring, had an instant's vision of a streaming
cloak, of a girl's face, set in a tawny swirl of loosened hair. With a
cry that was lost in the shriek of escaping steam, he dragged his
plunging horse around and the white blaze swept him also, as the rider
pulled down at his side.

"You!" he cried. He leaned and caught the slim hands gripped on the
bridle, shaking now. "You!"

The dazzling brightness had gone by, and the air was full of the
groaning of the brakes as the long line of darkened sleepers shuddered
to its enforced stop. "John!"--He heard the sweet wild cry pierce
through the jumble of noises, and something in it set his blood running
molten through his veins. It held an agony of relief, of shame and of
appeal. "John .