hut was ruinous: in the summer tall weeds grew up around
it, and venomous snakes harbored beneath its rotted and broken floor; in
the winter the snow whitened it, and the wild fowl flew screaming in and
out of the open door and the windows that needed no barring. To-night
the door was shut and the windows in some way obscured. But the
interstices between the logs showed red; the hut was lighted within, and
some one was keeping tryst.

The stillness was deadly. It was not silence, for the river murmured in
the stiff reeds, and far off in the midnight forest some beast of the
night uttered its cry, but a hush, a holding of the breath, an expectant
horror. The door, warped and shrunken, was drawn to, but was not
fastened, as I could tell by the unbroken line of red light down one
side from top to bottom. Making no sound, I laid my hand upon it, pushed
it open a little way, and looked within the hut.

I had thought to find it empty or to find it crowded. It was neither.
A torch lit it, and on the hearth burned a fire. Drawn in front of the
blaze was an old rude chair, and in it sat a slight figure draped from
head to foot in a black cloak. The head was bowed and hidden, the whole
attitude one of listlessness and dejection. As I looked, there came a
long tremulous sigh, and the head drooped lower and lower, as if in a
growing hopelessness.

The revulsion of feeling was so great that for the moment I was dazed as
by a sudden blow. There had been time during the walk from the gaol for
enough of wild and whirling thoughts as to what should greet me in that
hut; and now the slight figure by the fire, the exquisite melancholy of
its posture, its bent head, the weeping I could divine,--I had but one
thought, to comfort her as quickly as I might. Diccon's hand was upon
my arm, but I shook it off, and pushing the door open crossed the uneven
and noisy floor to the fire, and bent over the lonely figure beside it.
"Jocelyn," I said, "I have kept tryst."

As I spoke, I laid my hand upon the bowed and covered head. It was
raised, the cloak was drawn aside, and there looked me in the eyes the
Italian.

As if it had been the Gorgon's gaze, I was turned to stone. The filmy
eyes, the smile that would have been mocking had it not been so very
faint, the pallor, the malignance,--I stared and stared, and my heart
grew cold and sick.

It was but for a minute; then a warning cry from Diccon roused me. I
sprang backward until the width of