had
their full midsummer intensity, the Scorpion trailing hotly on the
southern horizon, with Antares throwing out a fire like the red rays in
a diamond. Beneath it the city flung up a yellow glow that might have
been the smoke of a distant conflagration, while from the hilltop the
suburbs were a-sparkle. As, standing in the road, Claude looked through
the open gateway down over the slope of land, the hothouse roofs and the
distant levels of the pond gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance like
the sheen of ancient tarnished crystal.

The house was dark. It was dark and dead. It was dark and dead and
haunted. Everything was haunted; everything was dark. Even the furnace
chimney looming straight and black against the stars was plumeless. But
in the silence and stillness there was something that drew him on. He
crossed the road and went a few paces within the gate. He had not
ventured so far on the previous evening, and during the day he had dared
no more than to look upward from the boulevard below, after that
pilgrimage to Duck Rock on which William Sweetapple had surprised him.
Now in the darkness and quietness he stood, not searching so much as
dreaming. He was dreaming of Rosie, dreaming of her with a kind of
cheer. After all, he would be bringing joy to her as well as getting
peace of spirit for himself. It wouldn't be so hard. She would meet him
as she used to meet him here, as she used to let him come and visit her,
and then the atonement would be made. The process would be simple, and
he should become a man again.

The conviction was so sweet that he lingered to enjoy it, penetrating a
few steps farther into the spacious dimness of the yard. It was the
first minute of inward ease he had known since he had turned his back on
it. Now that he was once more on the spot, the Claude who was a
devil-of-a-fellow, something of a sport, but a decent chap all the same,
began again to run with red blood where there had been nothing but a
whining, shriveling apostate. It was like rejuvenescence, like a
re-creation.

Suddenly something moved. It moved at first in the shadow of the house,
and then out in the starlit spaces. It moved stealthily and creepily and
with a grotesque swiftness. Its action seemed irregular and uncertain,
like that of some night-marauding animal, till Claude perceived that it
was stalking him. He waited long enough to get a view that was almost
clear of a crouching attitude, the crouching attitude of