n
he heard them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim
moonlit piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the
shadows on the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways!
From the opposite side of the house he heard Kee-nan's spurs jangling,
his soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused
barracks. He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier
movement. It seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the
evening his jaded mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of
contemplating trifles, reverted to its own tormented processes. "Am
I not hiding?" he said to himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his
plight.

The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He
laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and
the red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with
affrighted speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of
the old lawn without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to
wall, first with the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled
effect sinking to silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome
_staccato_ that suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but
scant resemblance to the hearty mirth which had evoked it Keenan paused
and looked back with friendly gleaming eyes. "Oughter been a leetle
handier with these hyar consarns," he said, touching the pistols in his
belt.

It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily
armed for an evening visit at a neighbor's house. But it was a lawless
country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not
definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He
was looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight
starkly white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes,
through which a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of
furniture here and there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now
and then a scurrying movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one
mantel-piece, the black fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted
owl, whose motionless beadlike eyes met his with a stare of stolid
surprise. After he had passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence
to shuddering.

Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. "I wisht I hed viewed
that critter," he said, glumly. "I'd hev pu