he bend of
the river to take his prisoner to the Virginia line, he announced
himself and then, with a rude consideration, drew off.

"I'll ride ter ther elbow of ther road an' wait fer ye, Parish," he
said, awkwardly. "I reckon ye wants ter bid yore wife farewell afore ye
starts out."

Already those two had said such things as it is possible to say. They
had maintained a brave pretence of taking brief leave of each other; as
for a separation looking to a speedy and certain reuniting. They had
stressed the argument that, when this time of ordeal had been relegated
to the past, no cloud of fear would remain to darken their skies as
they looked eastward and remembered that behind those misty ranges lay
Virginia.

They had sought to beguile themselves--each for the sake of the
other--with all the tricks and chimeras of optimism, but that was only
the masquerade of the clown who laughs while his heart is sick and under
whose toy-bright paint is the gray pallor of despair.

That court and that jury over there would follow no doubtful course. Its
verdict of guilty might as well have been signed in advance, and, while
the girl smiled at her husband, it seemed to her that she could hear the
voice of the condemning judge, inquiring whether the accused had "aught
to say why sentence should not now be pronounced" upon him.

For, barring some miracle of fate, the end of that journey lay, and in
their hearts they knew it with a sickness of certainty, at the steps of
the gallows. The formalities that intervened were little more than the
mummeries of an empty formula with which certain men cloaked the spirit
of a mob violence they were strong enough to wreak.

Parish Thornton halted at the stile, and his eyes went back lingeringly
to the weathered front of the house and to the great tree that made a
wide and venerable roof above the other roof. The woman knew that her
husband was printing a beloved image on his heart which he might recall
and hold before him when he could never again look upon it. She knew
that in that farewell gaze and in the later, more loving one which he
turned upon her own face, he was storing up the vision he wanted to keep
with him even when the hangman's cap had shut out every other earthly
picture--when he stood during the seconds that must for him be ages,
waiting.

Then the hills reeled and spun before Dorothy Thornton's eyes as
giddily as did the fallen leaves which the morning air caught up in
lit