The darkness enveloped the hurrying man as it had done once before this night, when he stood silent and motionless in the middle of the road, near the toll-house, yet the girl still followed his retreating figure persistently through the gloom, beseeching him to return, to relinquish his fell purpose.

She stopped at last, understanding that it was futile to follow further, that he was deaf to her entreaties to turn back, and that she could no longer hope to overtake him. As she stood still and listened, she heard his retreating footsteps growing fainter and fainter far up the road.

Some minutes later, a second vivid band of light revealed his tall, dark figure sharply silhouetted against the sky, from the brow of the hill he had climbed, then darkness came again, like a black curtain, and blotted him from sight.

The girl stood for some time in the middle of the road, with hands clasped tightly together, and tear-stained face, striving to think connectedly, to reason calmly in the face of a new trouble.

What must she do? Which way to turn?

She well knew Milt's disposition—a veritable powder magazine it was, readily ignited by an angry spark, yet soon over with, a flash in the pan, one might say, without a bullet behind to be sped on its mission of evil.

Such dire threats as he had just uttered, were but the violent outburst of a sudden passion, and signified no durability of purpose, no fixed resolve. Long before he could reach the Squire's place, his better judgment would surely prevail—the calm after a spent storm. Probably he was already beginning to repent his hot temper, and regret his hasty speech.

That it was without cause Sally could not aver. From Milton's standpoint, at least, he must feel that he had been most shamefully used, not so much at the hands of the Squire, in the present instance, as by the girl herself. How meanly he must think of her—heartless, mercenary, hypocritical! And yet she dared not defend her actions by telling him the truth.

As she stood thus, uncertain and confused, looking anxiously toward the hill where she had last seen the solitary figure crowning it, a reassuring thought came to her. Even should Milt go as far as the Squire's, he would not be able to gain entrance to the house, for his uncle had doubtless reached home before this, and he would be little likely to admit any one into his house at that hour of the night, especially an avowed enemy, such as he knew his nephew to be.

If Milt attempted to make any trouble at all, he would wait until the morrow—her wedding day. How hateful the thought of this event now seemed to her! She felt at the moment that if Milt would only come back and tempt her to flight, this unhappy marriage would never take place. She would risk anything, everything, and marry the younger man despite all else. Why had she not thought of this sooner? Oh! yes, she remembered, it was on her mother's account. What would become of her?

As the unhappy girl recalled her lover's angry words, she felt that she deserved them all—each word of harsh reproach, of fierce anger, and just scorn. It was a very wonder he had not offered to strike her dead as she stood before him. To think he had even been a witness to her kiss, and had moreover heard from her very own lips the confession that she was about to wed his hated kinsman. It was little wonder that Milt was half crazed by jealousy and rage.

If he did but know the terrible sacrifice she was about to make for his sake, he must surely pity her, and no longer taunt her for her seeming perfidy and falseness of heart.

The girl found herself wondering that her lover's anger had not centered on herself rather than the Squire. She was the one on whom the younger man should have avenged himself. Perhaps it was a fortunate thing, after all, that she had not followed him further into the night. He might have been tempted, in his ungovernable rage, to wreak his vengeance on her as well as on his hated kinsman. A strange, unusual timidity suddenly took possession of her—a feeling that was near akin, to dread of the younger man, irresponsible in his jealous rage, though scarcely a fear of the man himself, so much as of the demon of jealousy she had aroused in him.

Beset with this new sensation, she peered cautiously into the night, as though one might be lurking in hiding near by, ready to spring forth upon her, then realizing that nothing but darkness lay around her, she abruptly turned her steps toward the toll-house.

Alas! the bitter disappointment of life. Thus had come to naught all the efforts in Milton Derr's behalf, her own sacrifice a useless thing, since, instead of averting the dangers that threatened him, she had unwittingly been the cause of involving him in yet greater perils.

Even though his threats against the Squire were but idle ones—blasted buds of evil without promise of fruition, as she believed them to be, still, if Milt persisted in tarrying longer in the locality, he was not only putting his own life in jeopardy, but would also bring on Steve Judson swift retribution as well.

She had tried to impress these facts on Milt's mind before he had gone away. Why had he not remained away as she had entreated him to do, on parting?

Then she remembered that he would not have returned—that he would probably have known nothing of her marriage until it was too late, if he had not read an announcement of it in the papers. Her mother was really at the bottom of it all, she was chiefly to blame for Milt's return; for many things, in fact, now bearing the bitter fruit of sorrow.

Mrs. Brown had caused the notice of the marriage to be put in the paper without her daughter's knowledge or consent. Sally had begged her mother to say as little about the wedding as possible, and if that obdurate person had only heeded the request, all this present trouble might easily have been avoided.

Beset with anxious doubts, intangible fears, disquieting thoughts, feeling the while most bitterly toward her mother for the officious part she had persistently played in all this unhappy affair, Sally retraced her steps slowly to the toll-house.

Poor girl! Truly her marriage eve was not a propitious one.

The first objects on which the girl's eyes rested the next morning, when she awoke after a troubled sleep, were the simple wedding garments spread out carefully on some chairs near her bed, and as she lay and looked at them in bitterness of heart and spirit, she heard her mother astir in the kitchen preparing breakfast.

Sally half rose in bed. Her very heart seemed faint within her as she gazed on all this hateful reminder of what the day held in store, and with a quick sob she buried her face in her hands.

As she sat thus—a tearful, sobbing figure—surely a strange posture for a prospective bride on her bridal morn, she heard a horse galloping swiftly along the road, and as the sound came nearer, she found her attention gradually absorbed by it. There seemed something of undue haste in the rider's speed.

A moment later the winded animal stopped at the toll-house gate, while a loud knock quickly summoned Mrs. Brown to the door. Sally's alert ear caught the sound of a negro's voice without, speaking rapidly and excitedly, then a sharp exclamation from the toll-taker followed.

The listening bride-elect could not distinguish the negro's hurried words, nor guess the import of his message, but finally she caught one single word that her mother uttered, and that word was—"murdered."

Scarcely had it reached the girl's strained attention, when she sprang hurriedly out of bed, and catching up her wedding dress threw it hastily over her shoulders. Then her strength seemed suddenly to go, and she stood trembling and white, her eyes fixed on the door of her room in a vacant stare, her mind a blank to all surroundings.

Her mother found her thus when she came into the room a few moments later, visibly agitated.

"You heard it then?" she said huskily, looking into Sally's terror-stricken face.

"He could not have done it!" gasped Sally, brokenly. "It was only an idle threat," she added, her voice sinking to a whisper.

"Of course he didn't do it!" exclaimed her mother, catching only her daughter's first words. "He was murdered—murdered in cold blood!"

The girl opened her mouth as if to speak again, but the sound crumbled to unintelligible murmurs, as the fear of uttering words no ear must ever hear flashed through her bewildered mind, so she stood looking blankly at her mother, with wide-open eyes of horror, while the color fled from her face, leaving a ghastly pallor instead.

All the dreadful interval she was thinking of Milton Derr rather than his victim, and she started like a guilty thing at her mother's next words:

"There's but one person in the whole wide world who could have done this, to my thinkin', an' that's Milt Derr!"