Twenty yards from the fence the off side wheel had gone.

The phaËton, flinging its occupants out, tilted, struck the earth at the trace coupling just as a man might strike it with his shoulder, dragged for five yards or so, breaking dash board and mud guard and brought the off side horse down as though it had been poleaxed.

Silas, with the luck that always fell to him in accidents, was not even stunned. Phyl was lying like a dead creature just where she had been flung amongst some bent grass.

He rushed to her. She was not dead, her pulse told that, nor did she seem injured in any way. He left her, ran to the horses, undid the traces and got the fallen horse on its feet, then he stripped them of their harness and turned them loose.

Having done this he returned to the girl. Phyl was just regaining consciousness; as he reached her she half sat up leaning on her right arm.

“Where are the horses?” said she. They were her first thought.

“I’ve let them loose—there they are.”

She turned her head in the direction towards which he pointed. The horses, free of their harness, had already found a grass patch and were beginning to graze. The broken phaËton lay in the sunshine and the cushions flung to right and left showed as blue squares amidst the green of the grass; a light wind from the west was stirring the grass tops and a bird was singing somewhere its thin piping note, the only sound from all that expanse of radiant blue sky and green forsaken country.

“How do you feel now?” asked Silas.

“All right,” said Phyl.

“We’d better get somewhere,” he went on; “there are some cabins beyond that rice field, I can see their tops. There’s sure to be some one there and we can send for help.”

Phyl struggled to her feet, refusing assistance.

“Let us go there,” said she. She turned to look at the horses.

“They’ll be all right,” said Silas; “there’s lots of grass and there’s a pond over there—they’d live here a month without harm.”

He led the way to the fence, helped her over, and then, without a word they began to plod across the rice field.

When they reached the cabins they found them deserted, almost in ruins. They faced a great tract of tree-grown ground. In the old plantation days this place would have been populous, for to the right there were ruins of other cabins stretching along and bordering an old grass road that bent westward to lose itself amongst the trees, but now there was nothing but desolation and the wind that stirred the mossy beards of the live oaks and the rank green foliage of weeds and sunflowers. An old disused well faced the cabins.

Phyl gave a little shudder as she looked around her. Her mind, still slightly confused by the accident and beaten upon by troubles, could find nothing with which to reply to the facts of the situation—alone here with Silas Grangerson, lost, both of them, what explanation could she make, even to herself, of the position?

In the nearest cabin to the right some rough dry grass had been stored as if for the bedding of an animal. It was too coarse for fodder. Silas made her sit down on it to rest. Then he stood before her in the doorway.

For the first time in his life he seemed disturbed in mind.

“I’ll have to go and get help,” said he, “and find out where we are. It’s my fault. I’m sorry, but there’s no use in going over that. You aren’t fit to walk. I’ll go and leave you here. You won’t be afraid to stay by yourself?”

“No,” said Phyl.

“You needn’t be a bit, there’s no danger here.”

“I am thirsty,” said she.

“Wait.”

He went to the well head. The windlass and chain were there rusty but practicable and a bucket lay amongst the grass. It was in good repair and had evidently been used recently. He lowered it and brought up some water. The water was clear diamond bright, and cold as ice. Having satisfied himself that it was drinkable he brought the bucket to Phyl and tilted it slightly whilst she drank. Then he put it by the door.

“Now I’ll go,” said he, “and I shan’t be long. Sure you won’t be afraid?”

“No,” she replied.

“You’re not angry with me?”

“No, I’m not angry.”

He bent down, took her hand and kissed it. She did not draw it away or show any sign of resentment; it was cold like the hand of a dead person.

He glanced back as he turned to go. She saw him stand at the doorway for a moment looking down along the grass road, his figure cut against the blaze of light outside, then the doorway was empty.

She was never to see him again.

Outside in the sunlight Silas hesitated for a moment as though he was about to turn back, then he went on, striking along the grass road and between the trees.

Although he had never been over the ground before, he guessed it to be a part of the old Beauregard plantation and the distance from Grangerville to be not more than eight miles as the crow flies. By the road, reckoning from where the accident had occurred, it would be fifteen. But the lie of the place or the distance from Grangersons mattered little to Silas. His mind was going through a process difficult to describe.

Silas had never cared for anything, not even for himself. Danger or safety did not enter into his calculations. Religion was for him the name of a thing he did not understand. He had no finer feelings except in relationship to things strong, swift and brilliant, he had no tenderness for the weakness of others, even the weakness of women.

He had seized on Phyl as a Burgomaster gull might seize on a puffin chick, he had picked her up on the road to carry her off regardless of everything but his own desire for her—a desire so strong that he would have dashed her and himself to pieces rather than that another should possess her.

Well, as he watched her seated on the straw in that ruined cabin, subdued, without energy, and entirely at his mercy, a will that was not his will rose in opposition to him. Some part of himself that had remained in utter darkness till now woke to life. It was perhaps the something that despite all his strange qualities made him likeable, the something that instinct guessed to be there.

It stood between him and Phyl. He was conscious of no struggle with it because it took the form of helplessness.

Nothing but force could make her give him what he wanted. The thing was impossible, beyond him. He felt that he could do everything, fight everything, subdue everything—but the subdued.

There was something else. Weakness had always repelled him, whether it was the weakness of the knees of a horse or the weakness of the will of a man. Phyl’s weakness did not repel him but it took the edge from his passion. It was almost a form of ugliness.

He had determined on finding help to send some one back for Phyl; any of the coloured folk hereabouts would be able to pilot her to Grangersons. He was not troubling about the broken phaËton or the horses; the horses had plenty of food and water; so far from suffering they would have the time of their lives. They might be stolen—he did not care, and nothing was more indicative of his mental upset than this indifference toward the things he treasured most.

All to the left of the grass road, the trees were thin, showing tracts of marsh land and pools, and the melancholy green of swamp weeds and vegetation.

The vegetable world has its reptiles and amphibians no less than the animal; its savages, its half civilised populations, and its civilised. The two worlds are conterminous, and just as cultivated flowers and civilised people are mutually in touch, here you would find poisonous plants giving shelter to poisonous life, and the amphibious giving home to the amphibious.

The woods on the right were healthier, more dense, more cheerful, on higher ground; one might have likened the grass road to the life of a man pursuing its way between his two mysteriously different characters.

Silas had determined to make straight for home after having sent assistance for Phyl, what he was going to do after arriving home was not evident to his mind; he had a vague idea of clearing out somewhere so that he might forget the business. He had done with Phyl, so he told himself.

But Phyl had not done with him. He had been scarcely ten minutes on his road when her image came into his mind. He saw her, not as he had seen her last seated on the straw in the miserable cabin, but as he had seen her at the ball.

The curves of her limbs, the colour of her hair, her face, all were drawn for him by imagination, a picture more beautiful even than the reality.

Well, he had done with her, and there was no use in thinking of her—she cared for that cursed Pinckney and she was as good as dead to him, Silas.

An ordinary man would have seen hope at the end of waiting, but Silas was not an ordinary man, a long and dubious courtship was beyond his imagination and his powers. Courtship, anyhow, as courtship is recognised by the world was not for him. He wanted Phyl, he did not want to write letters to her.

There is something to be said for this manner of love-making, it is sincere at all events.

He tried to think of something else and he only succeeded in thinking of Phyl in another dress. He saw her as he saw her that first day in the stable yard at Grangersons. Then he saw her as she was dressed that day in Charleston.

Then he remembered the scene in the churchyard. He could still feel the smack she had given him on the face. The smack had not angered him with her but the remembrance of it angered him now. She would not have done that to Pinckney.

Turning a corner of the road he came upon a clear space and on the borders of the clearing to the right some cottages. There were some half-naked pikaninnies playing in the grass before them; and a coloured woman, washing at a tub set on trestles, catching sight of him, stood, shading her eyes and looking in his direction.

Silas paused for a moment as if undecided, then he came on. He asked the woman his whereabouts and then whether she could sell him some food. She had nothing but some corn bread and cold bacon to offer him and he bought it, paying her a dollar and not listening to her when she told him she could not make change.

He was like a man doing things in his sleep; his mind seemed a thousand miles away. The woman packed the bread and bacon in a mat basket with a plate and knife and watched him turn back in his tracks and vanish round the bend of the road, glad to see the last of him. She reckoned him crazy.

He was going back to Phyl.

His resolution never to see her again had vanished. She was his and he was going to keep her, no matter what happened.

He would never part with her alive, if she killed him, if he killed her, what matter. Nothing would stand in his path.

He reached the turning and there in the sunlight lay the half ruined cabins and the well.

Walking softly he came to the door of the cabin where he had left Phyl. She was there lying on the straw fast asleep. It was the sleep that comes after exhaustion or profound excitement; she scarcely seemed to breathe.

Putting his bundle down by the door he came in softly and knelt down beside her. His face was so close to hers that he could feel her breath upon his mouth.

It only wanted that to complete his madness. He was about to cast himself beside her when a pain, vicious and sharp as the stab of a red hot needle struck him just above his right instep.