an on in a long
straight line. Just beyond this angle he came upon a little wooden door
thickly studded with nails. It was made to open inward, and on the
outside there was no knob or handle of any kind, only a large key-hole
of the simple, old-fashioned sort. Slipping up near to look, Ste. Marie
observed that the edges of the key-hole were rusty, but scratched a
little through the rust with recent marks; so the door, it seemed, was
sometimes used. He observed another thing. The ground near by was less
encumbered with trees than at any other point, and the turf was
depressed with many wheel marks--broad marks, such as are made only by
the wheels of a motor-car. He followed these tracks for a little
distance, and they wound in and out among the trees, and beyond the thin
fringe of wood swept away in a curve toward Issy, doubtless to join the
road which he had already imagined to lie somewhere beyond the
enclosure.

Beyond the more open space about this little door the young trees stood
thick together again, and Ste. Marie pressed cautiously on. He stopped
now and then to listen, and once he thought that he heard from within
the sound of a woman's laugh, but he could not be sure. The slight
change of direction had confused him a little, and he was uncertain as
to where the house lay. The wall was twelve or fifteen feet high, and
from the level of the ground he could, of course, see nothing over it
but tree tops. He went on for what may have been a hundred yards, but it
seemed to him very much more than that, and he came to a tall gnarled
cedar-tree which stood almost against the high wall. It was half dead,
but its twisted limbs were thick and strong, and by force of the tree's
cramped position they had grown in strange and grotesque forms. One of
them stretched across the very top of the stone wall, and with the
wind's action it had scraped away the coping of tiles and bottle-glass
and had made a little depression there to rest in.

Ste. Marie looked up along this natural ladder, and temptation smote him
sorely. It was so easy and so safe! There was enough foliage left upon
the half-dead tree to screen him well, but whether or no it is probable
that he would have yielded to the proffered lure. There seems to have
been more than chance in Ste. Marie's movements upon this day; there
seems to have been something like the hand of Fate in them--as doubtless
there is in most things, if one but knew.

He left his hat and sti