eless. The story was
true, and it would spread; no power of his could prevent. He could not
deceive himself, even. That name! Again the white anger born of
memory, flooded him. Curses on the name and on the man who had spoken
it! Why must the fellow have turned coward at the last moment? Had
they but touched feet over the line--

Suddenly Ichabod stopped, his hands pressed to his head. Camilla,
home--alone! And he had forgotten! He hurried back to the waiting
Swede, an anathema that was not directed at another, hot on his
lips.

"All ready, Ole," he announced, clambering to the seat.

The boy handed up the lines lingeringly.

"Here, sir." Then uncontrollable, long-repressed curiosity broke the
bounds of deference. "You--heard him, sir?"

"Yes."

Ole edged toward his own wagon.

"It wasn't so?"

"Duggin swore it was a lie."

"He--"

"He swore it was false, I say."

They drove out into the prairie and the night; the stars looking down,
smiling, as in the morning which was so long ago, the man had
smiled,--looking upward.

"Tiny, tiny mortal," they twinkled, each to the other. "So small and
hot, and rebellious. Tiny, tiny, mortal!"

But the man covered his face with his hands, shutting them out.

CHAPTER VI--BY A CANDLE'S FLAME

Asa Arnold sat in the small upstairs room at the hotel of Hans Becher.
It was the same room that Ichabod and Camilla had occupied when they
first arrived; but he did not know that. Even had he known, however,
it would have made slight difference; nothing could have kept them
more constantly in his mind than they were at this time. He had not
slept any the night before; a fact which would have spoken loudly to
one who knew him well; and this morning he was very tired. He lounged
low in the oak chair, his feet on the bed, the usual big cigar in his
mouth.

This morning, the perspective of the little man was anything but
normal. Worse than that, he could not reduce it to the normal, try as
he might.

His meeting with Camilla yesterday had produced a deep and abiding
shock; for either of them to have been so moved signified the
stirring of dangerous forces. They--and especially himself--who had
always accepted life, even crises, so calmly; who had heretofore
laughed at all display of emotion--for them to have acted as they had,
for them to have spoken to each other the things they had spoken, the
things they could not forget, that he never could forgive--it was
unbelievabl