any expected visitor. He
was not quite sure what to do.

By dint of many questions and replies, which took the form of nods and
shakes of the head on the part of Chintz, Hervey learnt that Iredale
had gone over to Loon Dyke, but that he would be back to supper.

"Then I'll wait for him," he said decidedly. "You can take my horse.
I'll go inside."

The head man took the horse reluctantly and Hervey passed into the
house.

For a long time he stood at the open window watching the storm. How it
raged over the valley! The rain came down in one steady, hissing
deluge, and the hills echoed and re-echoed with the crashing thunder.
The blinding lightning shot athwart the lowering sky till the nerves
of the watcher fairly jumped at each successive flash. And he realized
what a blessing the deluge of rain was in that world of resinous
timber. What might have been the consequences had the storm preceded
the rain? Hardened as he was to such things, even Hervey shuddered to
think.

Wild as was the outlook, the waiting man's thoughts were in keeping
with his surroundings, for more relentless they could not well have
been. Iredale's money-bags should surely be opened for him that night
before he returned home. He would levy a heavy toll for his silence.

His great dark eyes, so indicative of the unrestrained nature which
was his, burned with deep, cruel fires as he gazed out upon the scene.
There was a profoundness, a capacity for hellishness in their
expression which scarcely belonged to a sanely-balanced mind. It was
inconceivable that he could be of the same flesh and blood as his
sister, and yet there was no doubt about it. Perhaps some unusually
sagacious observer would have been less hard to convince. Hervey was
bad, bad all through. Prudence was good. Swayed by emotion the girl
might have displayed some strange, hidden, unsuspected passionate
depths, as witness her feelings at her dying lover's bedside. Her rage
at the moment when she realized that he had been murdered was
indescribable. The hysterical sweep of passion which had moved her at
that moment had been capable of tragic impulse, the consequences of
which one could hardly have estimated. But her nature was thoroughly
good. Under some sudden stress of emotion, which for the moment upset
the balance of reason, a faint resemblance to the brother might be
obtained. But while Hervey's motives would be bad, hers would have for
their primary cause a purpose based upon