ught he gripped the hammer ready to strike.

And yet, even thus, she was a beautiful work of man's hands, and Antony,
hating to destroy beauty, still forbore to strike--just as he would have
shrunk from breaking in pieces a shapely vase. Then, too, the
resemblance to Beatrice took him again. Crudely to smash features so
like hers seemed a sort of mimic murder. So he still hesitated. Was
there no other way? Then the thought came to him: "Bury her." It pleased
him. Yes, he would bury her.

So, having found a spade, he took her from the wall, and looked from
his door into the wood, pondering where her grave should be. A whitebeam
at a little distance made a vivid conflagration of green amid the sombre
boles of the pines. Pinewoods rely on their undergrowth--bracken and
whortleberry and occasional bushes--for their spring illuminations, and
the whitebeam shone as bright in that wood as a lamp in the dark.

"I will bury her beneath the whitebeam," said Antony, and he carried her
thither.

Soon the grave was dug amid the pushing fronds of the young ferns, and
taking one long look at her, Antony laid her in the earth, and covered
her up from sight. Was it only fancy that as he turned away a faint
music seemed to arise from the ground, forming into the word "Resurgam"
as it died away?

"It is done," said Antony to Beatrice. "But I could not break her, she
looked so like you; so I buried her in the wood."

Beatrice kissed him gratefully. But her heart would have been more
satisfied had Silencieux been broken.

CHAPTER XXI

"RESURGAM!"

"Resurgam!"

Had his senses deceived him? They must have deceived him. And yet that
music at least had seemed startlingly near, sudden, and sweet, as though
one should tread upon a harp in the grass. For the next day or two
Antony could not get it out of his ears, and often, like a sweet wail
through the wood, he seemed to hear the word "Resurgam."

Was Silencieux a living spirit, after all,--no mere illusion, but one of
those beautiful demons of evil that do possess the souls of men?

He went and stood by Silencieux's grave. It was just as he had left it.
Only an early yellow butterfly stood fanning itself on the freshly
turned earth.

Was it the soul of Silencieux?

Cursing himself for a madman, he turned away, but had not gone many
yards, when once more--there was that sudden strain of music and the
word "Resurgam" somewhere on the wind.

This time he knew he was not