e considered, in the world of
criminal activities, a very large sum of money; and it had been lying
here, as of no value, in a drawer of the library table since the day
on which the gold certificates had arrived on my check from the Boston
bank.

Madame Barras had not taken the currency away as I imagined. It was
extremely careless of her, but was it not an act in character?

What would such a woman know of practical concern?

I spoke to the butler. He should not wait up, I would let myself in; and
I went out.

I remember that I got a cap and a stick out of the rack; there was no
element of selection in the cap, but there was a decided subconscious
direction about the selection of the stick. It was a heavy blackthorn,
with an iron ferrule and a silver weight set in the head; picked up--by
my father at some Irish fair--a weapon in fact.

It was not dark. It was one of those clear hard nights that are not
uncommon on this island in midsummer; with a full moon, the road
was visible even in the wood. I swung along it with no particular
precaution; I was not expecting anything to happen, and in fact, nothing
did happen on the way into the village.

But in this attitude of confidence I failed to discover an event of this
night that might have given the whole adventure a different ending.

There is a point near the village where a road enters our private one;
skirts the border of the mountain, and, making a great turn, enters the
village from the south. At this division of the road I heard distinctly
a sound in the wood.

It was not a sound to incite inquiry. It was the sound of some
considerable animal moving in the leaves, a few steps beyond the road.
It did not impress me at the time; estrays were constantly at large in
our forests in summer, and not infrequently a roaming buck from the
near preserves. There was also here in addition to the other roads,
an abandoned winter wood-road that ran westward across the island to
a small farming settlement. Doubtless I took a slighter notice of the
sound because estrays from the farmers' fields usually trespassed on us
from this road.

At any rate I went on. I fear that I was very much engrossed with the
memory of Madame Barras. Not wholly with the feminine lure of her,
although as I have written she was the perfection of that lure. One
passed women, at all milestones, on the way to age, and kept before
them one's sound estimates of life, but before this woman one lost on