every sigh, _you_ shall pay
dearly; _dearly!_ I will avenge my mother's wrongs, some day; for _you
are her murderer_!"

[Illustration: "I will avenge my mother's wrongs some day; for _you
are her murderer_."--page 42.]

John Arthur gazed in speechless amaze into the space before him--but
she was gone! The stern, vengeful, set face was no longer there. The
proud, ringing voice was no longer sounding in his ear. The uplifted,
warning, threatening hand menaced him only in memory. And before the
might of her purpose, and the force of her maledictions, he stood as
in a trance.

When he had so far recovered himself as to think of her sudden
disappearance, he went out quickly. The entrance door stood wide open;
the dim light flickered on an empty hall and stairway; the sky was
black with clouds, and never a star; the wind moaned about the house;
and across the meadow came the doleful howl of old Hagar's watch-dog.

But Madeline was not to be found.

Always, in the days to come, he remembered her face as it had looked
on him that night. Often in dreams he would start and cry out, haunted
by the sound of her scornful voice, the spectre of her threatening
hand.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DIE IS CAST.

Lucian Davlin paced the platform of the Bellair depot, in a very
unpleasant frame of mind.

His companion,--half servant, half confederate, wholly and entirely a
rascal,--discerning his mood and, as ever, adapting himself to it, had
withdrawn to a respectful distance. Only the shine of his cigar,
glowing through the darkness, betokened his proximity, or the fact
that the dark platform was not in the sole possession of the sullen
man who paced its brief length, and questioned the Fate in which he
trusted, and which, for once, had played him a sorry trick.

[Illustration: "Gad! to be baffled like this!"--page 46.]

He had been deceived by a mere school-girl. She had not even deigned
him a farewell word. He had lost a fair prize.

"Gad!" he muttered, biting viciously at his cigar, "to be baffled like
this; to lose that little beauty; to be foiled like a moon-struck
idiot and never know how or why! I can't write her, with that cursed
old step-father to interfere. I can't return again very soon. And she
_is_ such a little beauty!"

He paused at the end of the darkened platform, and looked down the
track; in the direction of the grove where they had met, and of
Madeline's home. It was almost time for the train. At the up