remark.

"Me, too!" cried Davy with a gulp. It was awful to contemplate
following that ghostly voice away into the death trap of the Drowned
Lands; but it was worse to remain there alone.

"No; you'd likely get mired, and cause more trouble. Get back to the
road, quick, and wait for me there. If I need your help, I'll call."

The cry arose again, this time fainter and more agonized. "Hurry!"
cried the young man. "Here, Tim! Take this, and don't lose it again,
for the life of you!"

He handed the boy the wedding dress, and hurried them forward until
they were beyond the perilous area of the swamp. There he left them,
and turning, plunged back into the woods.

Through the dense tangle, leaping from moss-clump to fallen log, he
forced his way, the lantern, like a swaying will-o'-the-wisp, now
casting a red splash on the surface of a pool, now leaving it in
blackness, to light up a new circle of vine and stump and riotous
undergrowth.

The two left behind stood for a moment gazing after him in terrified
dismay. While he was with them his scorn of their fears, and his
practical explanation of the dread sound, had acted like a stimulant;
but now that they were left alone in the darkness they gave way to
their worst apprehensions. He was gone! Gone straight to his doom, at
the call of that luring voice, as so many before him had gone! And no
one ever came back! Davy sank to the ground in a sobbing heap. Tim,
more inured to disaster, stood silent, his small face white and
fear-stricken.

Suddenly he flung himself upon his companion and clutched him by the
hair. "Le's tell the folks! They'll save him! Le's tell daddy an'
Spectacle John an' John McIntyre! They'll come an' bring him back!"
He was already tearing up the road in the direction of the village, and
all his languor put to flight by his fears, Davy came flying after him.
In an incredibly short time they burst upon the Cameron milkstand,
gasping out the appalling news that the banshee had got the doctor, and
he was being murdered in the Drowned Lands!

CHAPTER XVII

THE DAWN

Then in the darkness came a voice that said,
"As thy heart bleedeth so My heart hath bled;
As I have need of thee
Thou needest me."
--FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT.

All evening John McIntyre had been sitting alone in the doorway. He
was to resume work in the mill to-morrow, and as it was his last night
at home, he had half expected his b