e girl had only
brushed Evan's hand with hers and had fled up the dark alley by the
lodge gate.

Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn
there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should
ever move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last,
after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him
impatiently on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from
him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the
dread of a dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from
something from which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did
not hate the atheist; it is possible that he loved him. But Turnbull
was now something more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed
and devoted--a thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an
executioner.

"What is the matter with you?" asked Turnbull, with his hearty hand
still in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his innocent action
would allow.

"James," said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain, "I asked
for God's answer and I have got it--got it in my vitals. He knows how
weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the faith, forget the
face of Our Lady--yes, even with your blow upon her cheek. But the
honour of this earth has just this about it, that it can make a man's
heart like iron. I am from the Lords of the Isles and I dare not be a
mere deserter. Therefore, God has tied me by the chain of my worldly
place and word, and there is nothing but fighting now."

"I think I understand you," said Turnbull, "but you say everything tail
foremost."

"She wants us to do it," said Evan, in a voice crushed with passion.
"She has hurt herself so that we might do it. She has left her good
name and her good sleep and all her habits and dignity flung away on the
other side of England in the hope that she may hear of us and that we
have broken some hole into heaven."

"I thought I knew what you mean," said Turnbull, biting his beard; "it
does seem as if we ought to do something after all she has done this
night."

"I never liked you so much before," said MacIan, in bitter sorrow.

As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and
assembled to assist the chauffeur to his room. The mere sight of them
made the two wanderers flee as from a too frightful incongruity, and
before they knew where they were, they were well