aves in a rising gale.

"We played one game--and my wife lost. We played another--and my wife
won. We played the third--and the fate I had foreseen from the first
became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!"

A gasp--a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
flashed,--then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.

"A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced
her victory--her laugh and the taunting words: 'You play badly, Roger.
The child is mine. Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to revere
his father.' Had I a word to throw back? No. When I realized anything
but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto's mouth staring
helplessly out upon the sea. The boat which had floated us in at high
tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.
Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.

"That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back
alone at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike
my mind for an instant. I was in flight from my own past; in flight from
myself and the haunting dread of madness. When I awoke to reality again
it was to find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing
slightly ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed
it. But the impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to
my room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to
exercise my will than from any thought of her.

"Miss Strange" (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now
directly before her), "I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell
you of my further experiences that fatal night. It was not necessary for
me to pass my little son's door in order to reach the room I was making
for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what
seemed a long, long time. When I finally crept away it was to go to the
room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell
and faced my desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I was
callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery. I did not
even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no
ear could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house,
that great scream from my wife's room which announced the discovery of
h