m--

Hark! look! what moves yonder beneath the trees?--

Your parched, eager face strained forwards, your hungry eyes eating
through the gloom,--see emerge from the avenue two figures, sauntering
lover-like side to side! How forgetful of the world they seem! Little
think they of you, of the rack on which you have been outstretched.
But their hour has come. This moment shall be their last of
peace,--their last of happy love.

* * * * *

--What sound was that?--Was it a yell of triumph,--a shout for
help,--a scream of terror?--It does not come again; but the silence is
more terrible than the cry.

XXXIII.

THE BLACK CLOUD.

"Hiero,--it was his voice!" said Gnulemah. She looked in her lover's
face, trusting to his wisdom and strength. She rested her courage on
his, but her eyes stirred him like a trumpet-call. The burden of that
cry had been calamity. Love is protean, makes but a step from
dalliance to grandeur. Balder, no longer a sentimental bridegroom,
stood forth ready, brief, energetic,--but more a lover than before!

The voice had at the first moment sounded startlingly clear, then it
had seemed distant and muffled. As Helwyse swiftly skirted the granite
wall of the temple, his mind was busy with conjecture; but he failed
to hit upon any reasonable explanation. The cry had come from the
direction of the temple, and had he known of the existence of the
apertures through the masonry, he might partly have solved the
mystery. As it was, he thought only of getting inside, feeling sure
that, explainably or not, Manetho must be there.

In the oaken hall he met Nurse, who had also heard the cry, but knew
not whence it proceeded.

"In the temple, I think," said Helwyse, answering her agitated
gesture.

The clew was sufficient; she sped along towards the door whence she
had so lately fled panic-stricken, Helwyse following. Beneath the
solemn excitement and perplexity, lay warm and secure in his heart the
thought of Gnulemah,--his wife. Blessed thought! which the whips and
scorns of time should make but more tenderly dear and precious.

As he breathed the incense-laden air of the temple, Balder's face grew
stern. At each step he thought to see death in some ghastly form. In
the joy of this his marriage night he had wished all the world might
have rejoiced with him; but already was calamity abroad. Birth and
death, love and hate, happiness and woe, are borne on every human