see.
McGuire got down and without awakening the sleeping chauffeur went
forth into the spectral woods. He knew where the old tool cabin had
stood and, from the description Wells had given him, had gained a
general idea of where the fight had taken place--two hundred yards from
the edge of the swamp where Nichols and the Cameron girl had been found,
and nearly in a line with the biggest of the swamp-maples, the trunk of
which still stood, a melancholy skeleton of its former grandeur.

The ground was still hot under the mud and cinders, but not painfully
so, and he was not aware of any discomfort. Clouds of steam rose and
among them he moved like the ghost of a sin, bent, eager, searching with
heavy eyes for what he hoped and what he feared to find. The old tool
house had disappeared, but he saw a heap of ashes and among them the
shapes of saws and iron picks and shovels. But he passed them by, making
a straight line to the eastward and keeping his gaze upon the charred
and blackened earth, missing nothing to right and left, fallen branches,
heaps of rubbish, mounds of earth.

Suddenly startled, McGuire halted and stood for a long moment.... Then,
his hand before his eyes he turned away and slowly made his way back to
his automobile. But there was no triumph in his eyes. A power greater
than his own had avenged Ben Cameron.

His vigil was over--his nightly vigil--the vigil of years. He made his
way to his car and, awakening his chauffeur, told him to drive to Black
Rock House. But when he reached home, the set look that his face had
worn for so many weeks had disappeared. And in its place among the
relaxed muscles which showed his years, sat the benignity of a new
resolution.

It was broad daylight when he quietly knocked at the door of the room in
which the injured man lay. The doctor came to the door. It seemed that
all immediate danger of a further collapse had passed for the heart was
stronger and unless there was a setback Peter Nichols had an excellent
chance of recovery. McGuire himself offered to watch beside the bed; but
the doctor explained that a trained nurse was already on the way from
Philadelphia and would arrive at any moment. So McGuire went to his own
room and, sinking into his armchair, slept for the first time in many
weeks at peace, smiling his benignant smile.

* * * * *

Beth awoke in the pink room of Miss Peggy McGuire in which she had been
put to bed. She lay