emerged from the forest. The sun was still a
little way above the horizon; its cheerful beams partially restored
Pepeeta's spirits, and David felt a momentary pleasure as he saw a
slight smile upon her pale countenance.

"Do you feel happier now?" he said.

"Yes, a little," she answered, looking into his face with eyes suffused
with tears. "And I am so thankful that you are safe!"

"And so you fainted before we fell?" he asked, compelled to reassure
himself.

"Did you fall?" she said, trembling again and laying her hand upon his
arm.

"There, there," he answered gently; "I ought not to have asked you. We
must never allude to it again. We must forget it. Will you try?"

"Yes, I will try, but it is hard. It belongs to the past, and we must
live in the present and in the future. I will try. I love you so, and I
am so thankful that you are safe." As she said this, she took his hand
in both of hers and pressed it to her breast.

This tender caress produced a revulsion in his heart and he shuddered.
Pepeeta observed it. "What makes you tremble so?" she asked.

"Nothing," he answered, regaining his self-control. "It is only that I
have been very angry, and I cannot recover from it at once."

"No wonder," she said, taking his hand again and kissing it.

In the distance they saw the steeple of a church. "Look," said David,
"there must be a village near. We will top and rest here to-night, and
in the morning we will push on toward New Orleans and forget the past."

They rode in silence. Pepeeta's thoughts were full of gladness; and
David's full of agony--they rushed tumultuously back and forth through
his mind like contrary winds through a forest.

"Was it not enough that I should be an Adam, and fall? Must I also
become a Cain and go forth with the brand of a murderer on my forehead?"
he kept saying to himself.

His life seemed destined to reproduce that whole series of archetypal
experiences, whose records make the Hebrew Scriptures the inspired
mirror of human life.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FUGITIVE AND A VAGABOND

"That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own
wrong-doing!"--Daniel Deronda.

The morning after the fight David and Pepeeta hurried on to Louisville,
and from there took a steamer to New Orleans.

However hard it is to find stepping-stones when one wishes to rise,
those by which he can descend have been skilfully planted at every stage
of life's journey, and Satanic i