The presence of Ralph Dangelis in Nevilton House had altered, in more than one respect, the relations between Gladys and her cousin.

The girls saw much less of each other, and Lacrima was left comparatively at liberty to follow her own devices.

On several occasions, however, when they were all three together, it chanced that the American had made himself extremely agreeable to the younger girl, even going so far as to take her part, quite energetically, in certain lively discussions. These occasions were not forgotten by Gladys, and she hated the Italian with a hatred more deep-rooted than ever.

As soon as her first interest in the American’s society began to pall a little, she cast about in her mind for some further way of causing discomfort and agitation to the object of her hatred.

Only those who have taken the trouble to watch carefully what might be called the “magnetic antagonism,” between feminine animals condemned to live in close relations with one another, will understand the full intensity of what this young person felt. It was not necessarily a sign of any abnormal morbidity in our fair-haired friend.

For a man in whom one is interested, even though such interest be mild and casual, to show a definite tendency to take sides against one, on behalf of one’s friend, is a sufficient justification,—at least so nature seems to indicate—for the awakening in one’s heart of an intense desire for revenge. Such desire is often aroused in the most well-constituted temperaments among us, and in this case it might be said that the sound physical nerves of the daughter of the Romers craved the satisfaction of such an impulse with the same stolid persistence as her flesh and blood craved for air and sun. But how to achieve it? What new and elaborate humiliation to devise for this irritating partner of her days?

The bathing episode was beginning to lose its piquancy. Custom, with its kindly obliviousness, had already considerably modified Lacrima’s fears, and there had ceased to be for Gladys any further pleasure in displaying her aquarian agility before a companion so occupied with the beauty of lawn and garden at that magical hour.

Fate, however, partial, as it often is, to such patient tenacity of emotion, let fall at last, at her very feet, the opportunity she craved.

She had just begun to experience that miserable sensation, so sickeningly oppressive to a happy disposition, of hating where she could not hurt, when, one evening, news was brought to the house by Mark Purvis the game-keeper that a wandering flock of wild-geese had taken up its temporary abode amid the reeds of Auber Lake. Mr. Romer himself soon brought confirmation of this fact.

The birds appeared to leave the place during the day and fly far westward, possibly as far as the marshes of Sedgemoor, but they always returned at night-fall to this new tarrying ground.

The very evening of this exciting discovery, Gladys’ active mind formulated a thrilling and absorbing project, which she positively trembled with longing to communicate to Lacrima. She found the long dinner that night, and the subsequent chatter with Dangelis on the terrace, almost too tedious to be endured; and it was at an unusually early hour that she surprised her cousin by joining her in her room.

The Pariah was seated at her mirror, wearily reducing to order her entangled curls, when Gladys entered. She looked very fragile in her white bodice and the little uplifted arms, that the mirror reflected, showed unnaturally long and thin. When one hates a person with the sort of massive hatred such as, at that time, beat sullenly under Gladys’ rounded bosom, every little physical characteristic in the object of our emotion is an added incentive to our revengeful purpose.

This Saturnian planetary law is unfortunately not confined to antipathies between persons of the same sex. Sometimes the most unhappy results have been known to spring from the manner in which one or another, even of two lovers, has lifted chin or head, or moved characteristically across a room.

Thus it were almost impossible to exaggerate the loathing with which this high-spirited girl contemplated the pale oval face and slender swaying arms of her friend, as full of her new project she flung herself into her favourite arm chair and met Lacrima’s frightened eyes in the gilded Georgian mirror. She began her attack with elaborate feline obliquity.

“They say Mark Purvis’ crazy daughter has been giving trouble again. He was up this morning, talking to father about it.”

“Why don’t you send her away?” said the Italian, without turning round.

“Send her away? She has to do all the house-work down there! Mark has no one else, you know, and the poor man does not want the expense of hiring a woman.”

“Isn’t it rather a lonely place for a child like that?”

“Lonely? I should think it is lonely! But what would you have? Somebody must keep that cottage clean; and it’s just as well a wretched mad girl, of no use to anyone, should do it, as that a sound person should lose her wits in such a god-forsaken spot!”

“What does she do at—at these times? Is she violent?”

“Oh, she gets out in the night and roams about the woods. She was once found up to her knees in the water. No, she isn’t exactly violent. But she is a great nuisance.”

“It must be terrible for her father!”

“Well—in a way it does bother him. But he is not the man to stand much nonsense.”

“I hope he is kind to her.”

Gladys laughed. “What a soft-hearted darling you are! I expect he finds sometimes that you can’t manage mad people, any more than you can manage children, without using the stick. But I fancy, on the whole, he doesn’t treat her badly. He’s a fairly good-natured man.”

The Pariah sighed. “I think Mr. Romer ought to send her away at once to some kind of home, and pay someone to take her place.”

“I daresay you do! If you had your way, father wouldn’t have a penny left in the bank.”

The Pariah rose from her seat, crossed over to the window, and looked out into the sultry night. What a world this was! All the gentle and troubled beings in it seemed over-ridden by gigantic merciless wheels!

A little awed, in spite of herself, by the solemnity of her companion, Gladys sought to bring her back out of this translunar mood by capricious playfulness. She stretched herself out at full length in her low chair, and calling the girl to her side, began caressing her, pulling her down at last upon her lap.

“Guess what has happened!” she murmured softly, as the quick beating of the Pariah’s heart communicated itself to her, and made her own still harder.

“Oh, I know it’s something I shan’t like, something that I shall dread!” cried the younger girl, making a feeble effort to escape.

“Shall I tell you what it is?” Gladys went on, easily overcoming this slight movement. “You know, don’t you, that there’s a flock of wild-geese settled on the island in the middle of Auber Lake? Well! I have got a lovely plan. I’ve never yet seen those birds, because they don’t come back till the evening. What you and I are going to do, darling, is to slip away out of the house, next time Mr. Dangelis goes to see that friend of yours, and make straight to Auber Lake! I’ve never been into those woods by night, and it’ll be extraordinarily thrilling to see what Auber Lake looks like with the moon gleaming on it. And then we may be able to make the wild-geese rise, by throwing sticks or something, into the water. Oh, it’ll be simply lovely! Don’t you think so, darling? Aren’t you quite thrilled by the idea?”

The Pariah liberated herself by a sudden effort and stood erect on the floor.

“I think you are the wickedest girl that God ever made!” she said solemnly. And then, as the full implication of the proposed adventure grew upon her, she clasped her hands convulsively. “You cannot mean it!” she cried. “You cannot mean it! You are teasing me, Gladys. You are only saying it to tease me.”

“Why, you’re not such a coward as all that!” her cousin replied. “Think what it must be for Nance Purvis, who always lives down there! I shouldn’t like to be more cowardly than a poor crazy labouring girl. We really ought to visit the place, once in a way, to see if these stories are true about her escaping out of the house. One can never tell from what Mark says. He may have been drinking and imagining it all.”

Lacrima turned away and began rapidly undressing. Without a word she arranged the books on her table, moving about like a person in a trance, and without a word she slipped into bed and turned her face to the wall.

Gladys smiled, stretched herself luxuriously, and continued speaking.

“Auber Lake by moonlight would well be worth a night walk. You know it’s supposed to be the most romantic spot in Somersetshire? They say it’s incredibly old. Some people think it was used in prehistoric times by the druids as a place of worship. The villagers never dare to go near it after dark. They say that very curious noises are heard there. But of course that may only be the mad—”

She was not allowed to go on. The silent figure in the bed suddenly sat straight up, with wide-staring eyes fixed upon her, and said slowly and solemnly, “If I come with you to this place, will you faithfully promise me that your father will send that girl into a home?”

Gladys was so surprised by this unexpected utterance that she made an inarticulate gasping noise in her throat.

“Yes,” she answered, mesmerized by the Pariah’s fixed glance. “Yes—most certainly. If you come with me to see those wild-geese, I’ll make any promise you like about that girl!”

Lacrima continued for a moment fixing her with wide-dilated pupils.

Then, with a shiver that passed from head to foot, she slowly sank back on her pillows and closed her eyes.

Gladys rose a little uneasily from her chair. “But of course,” she said, “you understand she may not want to go away. She is quite crazy, you know. And she may prefer wandering about freely among dark woods to being locked up in a nice white-washed asylum, under the care of fat motherly nurses!”

With this parting shot she went off into her own room feeling in a curious vague manner that somehow or another the edge of her delectation had been taken off. In this unexpected resolution of the Italian, the Mythology of Sacrifice had suddenly struck a staggering blow at the Mythology of Power. Like the point of a bright silver sword, this unforseen vein of heroism in the Pariah cleared the sultry air of that hot night with a magical freshness and coolness. A planetary onlooker might have been conscious at that moment of strange spiritual vibrations passing to and fro over the sleeping roofs of Nevilton. But perhaps such a one would also have been conscious of the abysmal indifference to either stream of opposing influence, of the high, cold galaxy of the Milky Way, stretched contemptuously above them all!

All we are able to be certain of is, that as the fair-haired daughter of the house prepared for bed she muttered sullenly to herself. “I’ll make her go anyway. It will be lovely to feel her shiver, when we pass under those thick laurels! That mad girl won’t leave the place, unless they drag her by force.”

Left alone, Lacrima remained, for nearly two hours, motionless and with closed eyes. She was not asleep, however. Strange and desperate thoughts pursued one another through her brain. She wondered if she, too, like the girl of Auber Lake, were destined to find relief from this merciless world in the unhinging of her reason. She reverted again and again in her mind to her cousin’s final malicious suggestion. That would be indeed, she thought, a bitter example of life’s irony, if after going through all this to save the poor wretch, such sacrifice only meant worse misery for her. But no! God could not be as unkind as that.

She stretched out her arm for a book with which to still the troublesome palpitation of her heart.

The book she seized by chance turned out to be Andersen’s Fairy Stories, and she read herself to sleep with the tale of the little princess who wove coats of nettles for her enchanted brothers, and all night long she dreamed of mad unhappy girls struggling amid entwining branches, of bottomless lakes full of terrible drowned faces, and of flocks of wild-geese that were all of them kings’ sons!

The Saturday following this eventful colloquy between the cousins was a day of concentrated gloom. There was thunder in the vicinity and, although no rain had actually fallen in Nevilton, there was a brooding presence of it in the heavy atmosphere.

The night seemed to descend that evening more quickly than usual. By eight o’clock a strange unnatural twilight spread itself over the landscape. The trees in the park submitted forlornly to a burden of sultry indistinction and seemed, in their pregnant stillness, to be trying in vain to make mysterious signals to one another.

Dinner in the gracious Elizabethan dining-room was an oppressive and discomfortable meal to all concerned. Mrs. Romer was full of tremors and apprehensions over the idea of a possible thunder-storm.

The quarry-owner was silent and preoccupied, his mind reviewing all the complicated issues of a new financial scheme. Dangelis kept looking at his watch. He had promised to be at Dead Man’s Lane by nine o’clock, and the meal seemed to drag itself out longer than he had anticipated.

He was a little apprehensive, too, as to what reception he would receive when he did arrive at Mr. Quincunx’s threshold.

Their last encounter had been so extremely controversial, that he feared lest the sensitive recluse might be harbouring one of his obstinate psychic reactions at his expense.

He was very unwilling to risk the loss of Mr. Quincunx’s society. There was no one in Nevilton to whom he could discourse quite as freely and philosophically as he could to the conscripted office-clerk, and his American interest in a “representative type” found inexhaustible satisfaction in listening to the cynical murmurings of this eccentric being.

Lacrima was calm and self-contained, but she ate hardly anything; and the hand with which she raised her glass to her lips trembled in spite of all her efforts.

Gladys herself was exuberant with suppressed excitement. Every now and then she glanced furtively at the window, and at other times, when there was no reason for such an outburst, she gave vent to a low feline laugh. She was of the type of animal that the approach of thunder, and the presence of electricity in the air, fills with magnetic nervous exaltation.

The meal was over at last, and the various persons of the group hastened to separate, each of them weighed upon, as if by an atmospheric hand, with the burden of their own purposes and apprehensions.

The two girls retired to their rooms. Mrs. Romer retreated to her favourite corner in the entrance hall, and then, uneasy even here, took refuge in the assuaging society of her friend the housekeeper.

Romer himself marched away gloomily to his study; and Dangelis, snatching up his coat and hat, made off across the south garden.

It did not take the American long to reach the low hedge which separated Mr. Quincunx’s garden from the lane. The recluse was awaiting him, and joined him at once at the gate, giving him no invitation to enter, and taking for granted that their conversation was to be a pedestrian one.

Mr. Quincunx experienced a curious reluctance to allow any of his friends to cross his threshold. The only one completely privileged in this matter was young Luke Andersen, whose gay urbanity was so insidious that it would have overcome the resistance of a Trappist monk.

“Well, where are you proposing to take me tonight?” enquired Dangelis, when they had advanced in silence some distance up the hill.

“To a place that will interest you, if your damned artistic tastes haven’t quite spoiled your pleasure in little things!”

“Not to the Seven Ashes again?” protested the American. “I know this lane leads up there.”

“You wait a little. We shall turn off presently,” muttered his companion. “The truth is I am taking you on a sort of scouting expedition tonight.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Well—if you must know, you shall know! I saw Miss Traffio yesterday and she asked me to keep an eye on Auber Lake tonight.”

“What? That place they were talking of? Where the wild-geese are?”

Mr. Quincunx nodded. “It may, for all I know, be a wild-goose chase. But I find your friend Gladys is up to her little tricks again—frightening people and upsetting their minds. And I promised Lacrima that you and I would stroll round that way—just to see that the girls don’t come to any harm. Only we mustn’t let them know we’re there. Lacrima would never forgive me if Gladys saw us.”

“Do you mean to say that those two children are going to wander about these confounded damp woods of yours alone?” cried the American.

“Look here, Mr. Dangelis, please understand this quite clearly. If you ever say a word to your precious Miss Gladys about this little scouting expedition, that’s an end of our talks, forever and a day!”

The citizen of Ohio bowed with a mock heroic gesture, removing his hat as he did so.

“I submit to your conditions, Don Quixote. I am entirely at your service. Is it the idea that we should track our friends on hands and knees? I am quite ready even for that, but I know what these woods of yours are like.”

Mr. Quincunx vouchsafed no reply to this ill-timed jocosity. He was anxiously surveying the tall hedge upon their right hand. “Here’s the way,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Here’s the path. We can hit a short-cut here that brings us straight through Camel’s Cover, up to Wild Pine. Then we can slip down into Badger’s Bottom and so into the Auber Woods.”

“But I thought the Auber Woods were much nearer than that. You told me the other day that you could get into the heart of them, in a quarter of an hour from your own garden!”

“And so I can, my friend,” replied Mr. Quincunx, scrambling up the bank into the field, and turning to offer his hand to his companion. “But it happens that this is the way those girls are coming. At any rate that is what she said. They were going to avoid my lane but they were going to enter the woods from the Seven Ashes side, just because it is so much nearer.”

“I submit, I submit,” muttered the artist blandly. “I only hope this scouting business needn’t commence till we have got well through Camel’s Cover and Badger’s Bottom! I must confess I am not altogether in love with the sound of those places, though no doubt they are harmless enough. But you people do certainly select the most extraordinary names for your localities. Our own little lapses in these things are classical compared with your Badgers and Camels and Ashes and Dead Men!”

Mr. Quincunx did not condescend to reply to this. He continued to plough his way across the field, every now and then glancing nervously at the sky, which grew more and more threatening. Walking behind him and a little on one side, the American was singularly impressed by the appearance he presented, especially when the faint light of the pallid and cloud-flecked moon fell on his uplifted profile. With his corrugated brow and his pointed beard, Mr. Quincunx was a noticeable figure at any time, but under the present atmospheric conditions his lean form and striking head made a picture of forlorn desolation worthy of the sombre genius of a Bewick.

Dangelis conceived the idea of a picture, which he himself might be capable of evoking, with this melancholy, solitary figure as its protagonist.

He wondered vaguely what background he would select as worthy of the resolute hopelessness in Mr. Quincunx’s forlorn mien.

It was only after they had traversed the sloping recesses of Camel’s Cover, and had arrived at the crest of the Wild Pine ridge, that he was able to answer this question. Then he knew at once. The true pictorial background for his eccentric companion could be nothing less than that line of wind-shaken, rain-washed Scotch firs, which, visible from all portions of Nevilton, had gathered to themselves the very essence of its historic tragedy.

These trees, like Mr. Quincunx, seemed to derive a grim satisfaction from their submission to destiny. Like him, they submitted with a definite volition of resolution. They took, as he took, the line of least resistance with a sort of stark voluptuousness. They did not simply bow to the winds and rains that oppressed them. They positively welcomed them. And yet all the while, just as he did, they emitted a low melancholy murmur of protest, a murmur as completely different from the howling eloquence of the ashes and elms, as it was different from the low querulous sob of the larches and elders. The rusty-red stain, too, in the rough bark of their trunks, was also singularly congruous with a certain reddish tinge, which often darkened the countenance of the recluse, especially when his fits of goblin-humour shook him into convulsive merriment.

As they paused for a moment on this melancholy ridge, looking back at the flickering lights of the village, and down into the darkness in front of them, the painter made a mental vow that before he left Nevilton he would sublimate his vision of Mr. Quincunx into a genuine masterpiece. Plunging once more into the shadows, they followed a dark lane which finally emerged into a wide-sloping valley. In the depths of this was the secluded hollow, full of long grass and tufted reeds, which was the place known as Badger’s Bottom.

The entrance to Auber Wood was now at hand; and as they reached its sinister outskirts, they both instinctively paused to take stock of their surroundings. The night was more sultry than ever. The leaves and grasses swayed with an almost imperceptible movement, as if stirred, not by the wind, but by the actual heavy breathing of the Earth herself, troubled and agitated in her planetary sleep.

Sombre banks of clouds moved intermittently over the face of a blurred moon, and, out of the soil at their feet, rose up damp exotic odours, giving the whole valley the atmosphere of an enormous hot-house.

It was one of those hushed, steamy nights, pregnant and listening, which the peculiar conditions of our English climate do not often produce, and which are for that very reason often quite startling in their emotional appeal. The path which the two men took, after once they had entered the wood, was one that led them through a gloomy tunnel of gigantic, overhanging laurel-bushes.

All the chief entrances to Auber Wood were edged with these exotics. Some capricious eighteenth-century Seldom,—perhaps the one who raised the Tower of Pleasure on the site of the resting-place of the Holy Rood—had planted them there, and for more than a hundred years they had grown and multiplied.

Auber Lake itself was the centre of a circumference of thick jungle-like brushwood which itself was overshadowed by high sloping hills. These hills, also heavily wooded, formed a sort of gigantic cup or basin, and the level expanse of undergrowth they enclosed was itself the margin of a yet deeper concavity, in the middle of which was the lake-bed.

Mingling curiously with the more indigenous trees in this place were several unusual and alien importations. Some of these, like the huge laurels they were now passing under, belonged more properly to gardens than to woods. Others were of a still stranger and more foreign nature, and produced a very bizarre effect where they grew, as though one had suddenly come upon the circle of some heathen grove, in the midst of an English forest. Auber Lake was certainly a spot of an unusual character. Once it had been drained, and a large monolith, of the same stone as that produced by Leo’s Hill, had been discovered embedded in the mud. Traces were said to have been discerned upon this of ancient human carving, but local antiquarianism had contradicted this rumour. At least it may be said that nowhere else on the Romer estate, except perhaps in Nevilton churchyard, was the tawny-colored clay which bore so close a symbolic, if not a geological, relation to the famous yellow sandstone, more heavily and malignantly clinging, in its oozy consistence.

Dangelis and Mr. Quincunx advanced slowly, and in profound silence, along their overshadowed path.

An occasional wood-pigeon, disturbed in its roosting, flapped awkwardly through the branches; and far away, in another part of the wood, sounded at intervals the melancholy cry of a screech-owl.

Great leather-winged bats flitted over their heads with queer unearthly little cries; and every now and then some agitated moth, from the under-bushes, fluttered heavily across their faces. Sometimes in the darkness their feet stumbled upon a dead branch, but more often they slipped uneasily in the deep ruts left in the mud by the woodmen’s carts.

All the various intermittent noises they heard only threw the palpable stillness of the place into heavier relief.

The artist from the wind-swept plains of Ohio felt as though he had never plunged so deeply into the indrawn recesses of the earth-powers as he was doing now. It seemed to him as though they were approaching the guarded precincts of some dark and crouching idol. It was as if, by some ill-omened mistake, they had stumbled unawares upon a spot that through interminable ages had been forbidden to human tread.

And yet the place seemed to expect them, to await them; to have in reserve for them some laboured pregnancy of woeful significance.

Once more, as he walked behind Mr. Quincunx, Dangelis was startled by the extraordinary congruity of that forlorn figure with the occasion and the scene. The form of the recluse seemed to exhale a reciprocity of fearful brooding. Auber Wood seemed aware of him, and ready to welcome him, in consentaneous sympathy. He might have been the long-expected priest of some immemorial rites transacted there, the priest of some old heathen worship, perhaps the worship of generations of dead people, buried under those damp leaves.

It seemed a long while to Ralph Dangelis, in spite of the breathless quickening of his imagination, before the laurel-tunnel thinned away, and the two men were able to walk side by side between the trunks of the larger trees. Here again they encountered Scotch firs.

What strange dream, of what fantastic possessor of this solitude, had shaped itself into the planting of these moorland giants, among the native-born oaks and beeches of this weird place?

The open spaces at the foot of the tree-trunks were filled with an obscure mass of oozy stalks and heavily drooping leaves. The obscurity of the spot made it difficult to discern the differences between these rank growths; but the ghostly flowers of enormous hemlocks stood forth from among the rest. Fungoid excrescences, of some sort or another, were certainly prolific here. Their charnel-house odour set Dangelis thinking of a morgue he had once visited.

At last—and with quite startling suddenness—the path they followed emerged into a wide open expanse; and there,—under the diffused light of the cloud-darkened moon—they saw stretched at their feet the dim surface of Auber Lake.

Mr. Quincunx stood for a moment motionless and silent, leaning upon his stick. Then he turned to his companion; and the American noticed how vague and shadowy his face looked, as if it were a face seen through some more opaque medium than that of air.

They sat down together upon a fallen log; and out of an instinctive desire to break the tension of the spell that lay on him Dangelis lit a cigarette.

He had smoked in silence for some moments, when Mr. Quincunx, who had been listening attentively, raised his hand. “Hark!” he said, “do you hear anything?”

Across the stillness of the water came a low blood-curdling wail. It was hardly a human sound, and yet it was not like the voice of any bird or beast. It seemed to unsettle the drowsy natives of the spot; for a harsh twittering of sedge-birds answered it, and a great water-rat splashed down into the lake.

“God! they were right then,” whispered the American. “They spoke of some mad girl living down here, but I did not believe them. It seemed incredible that such a thing should be allowed. Quick, my friend!—we ought to warn those girls at once and get them away. This is not the sort of thing for them to hear.”

They both rose and listened intently, but the sound was not repeated; only a hot gust of wind coming, as it were, out of the lake itself, went quivering through the reeds.

“I don’t imagine,” said Mr. Quincunx calmly, “that your young lady will be much alarmed. I fancy she has less fear of this kind of thing than that water-rat we heard just now. It’ll terrify Lacrima, though. But I understand that your charming sweetheart gets a good deal of amusement from causing people to feel terror!”

Dangelis was so accustomed to the plain-spoken utterances of the hermit of Dead Man’s Lane that he received this indictment of his enchantress with complete equanimity.

“All the same,” he remarked, “I think we’d better go and meet them, if you know the direction they’re coming. It’s not a very pleasant proposition, any way, to face escaped lunatics in a place like this.”

“I tell you,” muttered Mr. Quincunx crossly, “your darling Gladys is coming here for no other reason than to hear that girl’s cries. The more they terrify Lacrima, the better she’ll be pleased.”

“I don’t know about Lacrima,” answered Dangelis. “I know that devil of a noise will scare me if I hear it again.”

Mr. Quincunx did not reply. With his hand on his companion’s arm he was once more listening intently. At the back of his mind was gradually forming a grim remote wish that some overt act and palpable revelation of Gladys Romer’s interesting character might effect a change of heart in the citizen of Ohio.

Such a wish had been obscurely present in his brain ever since they started on this expedition; and now that the situation was developing, it took a more vivid shape.

“I believe,” he remarked at last, “I hear them coming down the path. Listen! It’s on the other side of the pond,—over there.” He pointed across the water to the left-hand corner of the lake. It was from the right-hand corner, where the keeper’s cottage stood, that the poor mad girl’s voice had proceeded.

“Yes; I am sure!” he whispered after a moment’s pause. “Come! quick! get in here; then they won’t see us even if they walk round this way.”

He pulled Dangelis beneath the overhanging boughs of a large weeping willow. The droop of this tree’s delicate foliage made, in the semi-darkness in which they were, a complete and impenetrable hiding-place; and yet from between the trailing branches, when they held them apart with their hands, they had a free and unimpeded view of the whole surface of the lake.

The sound of distant voices struck clearly now upon their ears; and a moment after, nudging his companion, Mr. Quincunx pointed to two cloaked figures advancing across the open space towards the water’s edge.

“Hush!” whispered the recluse. “They are bound to come this way now.”

The two girls were, however, for the moment, apparently occupied with another intention. The taller of the two stopped and picked up something from the ground, and then approaching close to the lake’s edge raised her arm and flung it far into the water.

The object she threw must have been a stick or a stone of considerable size, for the splash it produced was startling.

The result was also startling. From a little island in the middle of the lake, rose suddenly, with a tremendous flapping, several large and broad-winged birds. They flew in heavy circles, at first, over the island; and then, descending to the water’s level, went splashing and flapping across its surface, uttering strange cries.

The noise made by these birds had hardly subsided, as they settled down in a thick bed of reeds, when, once more, that terrible inhuman wail rang out upon the night. Both men peered forth anxiously from their hiding-place, to see the effect of this sound upon their two friends.

They could see that they both stood stone-still for a moment as if petrified by terror.

Then they noticed that the taller of the two drew her companion still nearer to the water’s edge.

“If that yell begins again,” whispered the American, “I shall go out and speak to them.”

Mr. Quincunx made no answer. He prayed in his heart that something would occur to initiate this innocent Westerner a little more closely into the workings of his inamorata’s mind. It seemed indeed quite within the bounds of possibility that the recluse might be gratified in this wish, for the girls began rapidly advancing towards them, skirting the edge of the lake.

The two men watched their approach in silence, the artist savouring with a deep imaginative excitement the mystical glamour of the scene.

He felt it would be indelibly and forever imprinted on his mind, this hot heavily scented night, this pallid-glimmering lake, those uneasy stirrings of the wild-geese in their obscure reed-bed, and the frightful hush of the listening woods, as they seemed to await a repetition of that unearthly cry.

The girls had actually paused at the verge of the lake, just in front of their hiding-place; so near, in fact, that by stretching out his arm, from behind his willowy screen, Dangelis could have touched Gladys on the shoulder, when the fearfully expected voice broke forth again upon the night.

The men could see the visible tremor of panic-fear quiver through Lacrima’s slight frame.

“Oh, let us go!—let us go!” she pleaded, pulling with feverish fingers at her companion’s cloak.

But Gladys folded her arms and flung back her head.

“Little coward!” she murmured in a low unshaken voice. “I am not afraid of a mad girl’s yelling. Look! there’s one of those birds going back to the island!”

Once more the inhuman wail trembled across the water.

“Gladys! Gladys dear!” cried the panic-stricken girl, “I cannot endure it! I shall go mad myself if we do not go! I’ll do anything you ask me! I’ll go anywhere with you! Only—please—let us go away now!”

The sound was repeated again, and this time it proceeded from a quarter much nearer them. All four listeners held their breath. Presently the Italian made a terrified gesture and pointed frantically to the right bank of the lake.

“I see her!” she cried, “I see her! She is coming towards us!”

The frightened girl made a movement as if she would break away from her companion and flee into the darkness of the trees.

Gladys clasped her firmly in her arms.

“No—no!” she said, “no running off! Remember our agreement! There’s nothing really to be afraid of. I’m not afraid.”

A slight quiver in her voice a little belied the calmness of this statement. She was indeed torn at that moment between a very natural desire to escape herself and an insatiable craving to prolong her companion’s agitation.

In her convulsive terror the Italian, unable to free herself from the elder girl’s enfolding arms, buried her head in the other’s cloak.

Thus linked, the two might have posed for a picture of heroic sisterly solicitude, in the presence of extreme danger.

Once more that ghastly cry resounded through the silence; and several nocturnal birds, from distant portions of the wood, replied to it with their melancholy hootings.

The white-garbed figure of the mad girl, her arms tossed tragically above her head, came swaying towards them. She moved unevenly, and staggered in her advance, as if her volition had not complete power over her movements. Gladys was evidently considerably alarmed herself now. She clutched at a chance of combining escape with triumph.

“Say you let me off that promise!” she whispered hoarsely, “and we’ll run together! We’re quite close to the way out.”

Who can read the obscure recesses of the human mind, or gauge the supernatural strength that lurks amid the frailest nerves?

This reference to her sublime contract was the one thing needed to rouse the abandoned soul of the Pariah. For one brief second more the powers of darkness struggled over her bowed head with the powers of light.

Then with a desperate movement the Italian rose erect, flung aside her cousin’s arms, turned boldly towards the approaching maniac, and ran straight to meet her. Her unexpected appearance produced an immediate effect upon the unhappy girl. Her wildly-tossing arms fell to her side. Her wailing died away in pathetic sobs, and these also quickly ceased.

Lacrima seemed to act like one possessed of some invincible magic. One might have dreamed that now for the first time for uncounted ages this unholy shrine of heathen tradition was invaded by an emissary of the true Faith.

Gladys, who had reeled bewildered against the wood-work of an ancient weir, that formed the outlet to the lake, leaned in complete prostration of astonishment upon this support, and gazed helplessly and dumbly at the two figures. She was too petrified with amazement to notice the appearance of Ralph and Maurice, who, also absorbed in watching this strange encounter, had half-emerged from their concealment.

The three onlookers saw the Italian lay her hands upon the girl’s forehead, smooth back her hair, kiss her gently on the brow, and fling her own cloak over her bare shoulders. They heard her murmuring again and again some soft repetition of soothing words. Dangelis caught the liquid syllables of the Tuscan tongue. Evidently in her excitement the child of Genoa the Superb had reverted to the language of her fathers.

The next thing they saw was the slow retreat of the two together, towards the keeper’s cottage; the arm of the Italian clinging tenderly round the maniac’s waist.

At this point Dangelis stepped forward and made himself known to Gladys.

The expression on the face of Mr. Romer’s daughter, when she recognized the American, was a palimpsest of conflicting emotions. Her surprise was still more intense when Mr. Quincunx stepped out from the shadow of the drooping tree and raised his hat to her. Her eyes for the moment looked positively scared; and her mouth opened, like the mouth of a bewildered infant. The tone with which the citizen of Ohio addressed the confused young lady made the heart of Mr. Quincunx leap for joy.

“I am astonished at you,” he said. “I should not have believed such a thing possible! Your only excuse is that this infernal jest of yours has turned out so well for the people concerned, and so shamefully for yourself. How could you treat that brave foreign child so brutally? Why—I saw her trembling and trembling, and trying to get away; and you were holding—actually holding her—while that poor mad thing came nearer! It’s a good thing for you that the Catholic spirit in her burst out at last. Do you know what spell she used to bring that girl to her senses? A spell that you will never understand, my friend, for all this baptism and confirmation business! Why—she quoted passages out of the Litany of Our Lady! I heard her clearly, and I recognized the words. I am a damned atheist myself, but if ever I felt religion to be justified it was when your cousin stopped that girl’s crying. It was like real magic. You ought to be thoroughly proud of her! I shall tell her when I see her what I feel about her.”

Gladys rose from her seat on the weir and faced them haughtily. Her surprise once over, and the rebuke having fallen, she became mistress of herself again.

“I suppose,” she said, completely ignoring Mr. Quincunx, “we’d better follow those two, and see if Lacrima gets her safely into the house. I fancy she’ll have no difficulty about it. Of course if she had not done this I should have had to do it myself. But not knowing Italian”—she added this with a sneer—“I am not so suitable a mad-house nurse.”

“It was her good heart, Gladys,” responded the American; “not her Italian, nor her Litany, that soothed that girl’s mind. I wish your heart, my friend, were half as good.”

“Well,” returned the fair girl quite cheerfully, “we’ll leave my heart for the present, and see how Lacrima has got on.”

She took the arm which Dangelis had not offered, but which his chivalry forbade him to refuse, and together they proceeded to follow the heroic Genoese.

Mr. Quincunx shuffled unregarded behind them.

They had hardly reached the keeper’s cottage, a desolate and ancient erection, of the usual stone material, darkened with damp and overshadowed by a moss-grown oak, when Lacrima herself came towards them.

She started with surprise at seeing, in the shadowy obscurity, the figures of the two men.

Her surprise changed to pleasure when she recognized their identity.

“Ah!” she said. “You come too late. Gladys and I have had quite an adventure, haven’t we, cousin?”

Mr. Quincunx glanced at the American to see if he embraced the full generosity of the turn she gave to the situation.

Gladys took advantage of it in a moment. “You see I was right after all,” she remarked. “I knew you would lose your alarm directly you saw that girl! When it came to the point you were braver than I. You dear thing!” She kissed the Italian ostentatiously, and then retook possession of her admirer’s arm.

“I got her up to her room without waking her father,” said Lacrima. “She had left the door wide open. Gladys is going to ask Mr. Romer to have her sent away to some sort of home. I believe they’ll be able to cure her. She talked quite sensibly to me. I am sure she only wants to be treated gently. I’m afraid her father’s unkind to her. You are going to arrange for her being sent away, aren’t you, Gladys?”

The elder girl turned. “Of course, my dear, of course. I don’t go back on my word.”

The four friends proceeded to take the nearest path through the wood. One by one the frightened wild-geese returned to their roosting-place on the island. The water-rats resumed uninterrupted their night-prowls along the reedy edge of the lake, and the wood-pigeons settled down in peace upon their high branches.

Long before Dead Man’s Lane was reached the two couples had drifted conveniently apart in their lingering return.

Mr. Quincunx had seldom been more tender towards his little friend than he was that night; and Lacrima, still strangely happy in the after-ebb of her supernatural exultation, nestled closely to his side as they drifted leisurely across the fields.

In what precise manner the deeply-betrayed Gladys regained the confidence of her lover need not be related. The artist from Ohio would have been adamantine indeed, could he have resisted the appeal which the amorous telepathy of this magnetic young person gave her the power of expressing.

Meanwhile, in her low-pitched room, with the shadow of the oak-tree coming and going across her face, as the moonlight shone out or faded, Nance Purvis lay placidly asleep, dreaming no more of strange phantoms or of stinging whips, but of gentle spirits from some translunar region, who caressed her forehead with hands softer than moth’s wings and spoke to her in a tongue that was like the moonlight itself made audible.