to the Moor, and stole along
softly, listening for the least sound of the deer, and keeping his
eye on the alert to observe her.

He had been crouching in a bush near the pool when he was startled
by the apparition of Mehetabel.

At first he had supposed that the sound of steps proceeded from the
advancing deer, for which he was on the watch, and he lay close,
with his barrel loaded, and his finger on the trigger. But in place
of the deer his own wife approached, indistinctly seen in the
moonlight, so that he did not recognize her. And his heart stood
still, numbed by panic, for he thought he saw a spirit. But as the
form drew near he knew Mehetabel.

Perplexed, he remained still, to observe her further movements.
Then he saw her approach the stone of Thor, strike on it with an
extemporized hammer, and cry, "Save me from him! Take him away!"

Perhaps it was not unreasonable that he at once concluded that she
referred to himself.

He knew that she did not love him. Instead of each day of married
life drawing more closely the bonds that bound them together, it
really seemed to relax such as did exist. She became colder,
withdrew more into herself, shrank from his clumsy amiabilities, and
kept the door of her heart resolutely shut against all intrusion.
She went through her household duties perfunctorily, as might a
slave for a hated master.

If she did not love him, if her married life was becoming
intolerable, then it was obvious that she sought relief from it,
and the only means of relief open to her lay through his death.

But there was something more that urged her on to desire this. She
not merely disliked him, but loved another, and over his coffin she
would leap into that other man's arms. As Karon Wyeth had aimed at
and secured the death of her husband, so did Mehetabel seek
deliverance from him.

Bideabout sprang from his lurking-place to check her in the midst
of her invocation, and to avert the danger that menaced himself.
And now he saw the very man draw nigh who had withdrawn the heart
of his wife from him, and had made his home miserable; the man on
behalf of whom Mehetabel had summoned supernatural aid to rid her
of himself.

Kneeling behind Thor's Stone, with the steel barrel of his gun laid
on the anvil, and pointed in the direction whence came Iver's
voice, he waited till his rival should appear, and draw within
range, that he might shoot him through the heart.

"Summon him again," he whis