hing of the wind in the
grass, no sound broke through the calm of that wild and elevated
solitude. Meteors and falling stars flashed ever and anon in the
spangled vault. A whole world seemed to slumber.

Soon Renshaw began to notice an incoherency in his companion's replies.
Fatigue versus excitement had carried the day. Sellon, who was of a
full-blooded habit, and uninured to such calls as had of late been made
upon his energies, had succumbed. He was fast asleep.

Left alone in the midst of a dead world, while the whole wilderness
slumbered around, Renshaw strove to attune his faculties to the
prevailing calm--to try and gain a few hours of much-needed jest. But
his nerves were strung to their utmost tension. The speculation of
years, the object of his thoughts sleeping and waking, were about to be
attained. Sleep utterly refused to visit him.

He could not even rest. At last he rose. Taking up his trusty double
gun--rifle and shot-barrel--he wandered forth from the fireless camp.

By the light of the burning stars he picked his way cautiously along the
base of the rocky ridge, keeping a careful eye in front of him, above,
around, everywhere. Yes, the object of years of anxious thought, of
more than one lonely and perilous expedition into the heart of these
arid and forbidding wilds, was within reach at last. It must be. Did
not that gruesome find down there in the gully point unmistakably to
that?

The cool night wind fanned his brow. All the influences of the dead,
solemn wilderness were upon him, and his thoughts reverted to another
object, but to one upon which he had schooled himself to think no more.

In vain. There on that lonely mountain-top at midnight, in his utter
solitude, the man's heart melted within him at the thought of his
hopeless love--at the recollection of that anguished face, that broken
voice pleading for his forgiveness; for his sympathy in her own dire
extremity. What was she doing at that moment, he idly speculated? Ah!
her regrets, her longings, her prayers were not for him, were all for
the other; for the man who shared his present undertaking, who slumbered
so peacefully but a few hundred yards away.

Why had he brought this man to Sunningdale, to steal away that which
should have been his? Why had he brought him here now, to enrich him in
order that nothing might be wanting to complete his own utter
self-sacrifice? He owed him nothing, for had he not twice paid th