'you've come back to save me, Abraham.'

"My father did not speak then, he lifted my mother from off the stone,
and together we three walked home. Lettie lingered, the shadow with her.
Was that the young girl? I could not quite discern."

Mr. Axtell stopped in his narration, walked out of the village of Dead
Percivals, and to his mother's new-made grave. He came back soon.

"Miss Percival," he said, "two days ago you said, 'it was the strangest
thing that ever you saw man do, to dig his mother's grave.' It was a
work begun long ago; the first stroke was that August night; it is
nearly nineteen years ago. What do you think of it now?"

"As I thought then, Mr. Axtell."

He stood near me now. He went on.

"That young girl saved my life that night, Miss Percival. Ere we reached
home, a violent, sudden thunder-storm came down, with wind and rain, and
terrible strokes of lightning. We took shelter in another house than
home. Lettie and my preserver followed."

Another long pause came, a gathering together of the forces of his
nature, typical of the still hotness of the August night of which he
spoke, and after the ominous rest he emitted ponderous words. They came
like crackles of rattling electricity. I could taste it.

"Miss Percival, look at me one moment."

I obeyed.

"Do I look like a murderer?"

"I don't know."

"Don't turn your eyes away; do you know what certain words in this world
mean?"

"Signal one, and I will answer."

He looked so leonic that I felt the least bit in the world like running
away, but decided to stay, as he was just within my pathway of escape.

"Do you know what it is, what it means, when a human soul calls out from
its highest heights to another mortal, 'Thou art mine'?"

I do not think he expected an answer, but I answered a round, full,
truthful, "No."

"Then let it be the theme of thanksgiving," he said. "That fair young
girl is here now. I feel her sacred presence. She does not save me from
my imperious will.

"Do you know, Miss Percival," he suddenly resumed, "do you know that you
are here with Abraham Axtell, a man who has destroyed two lives: one
slowly, surely, through years of suffering; the other, oh! the other--by
a flash from God's wrath, and for eighteen years my soul has cried out
to her, 'Thou art mine,' and yet there is no response on earth, there
can be none? Would you know the name of my preserver that night,
come,"--and, bending down, he offered his hand