ting, and they gradually fell into
the tone that night watchers use, when they speak of mysterious things
under the gloomy spell of this sad half-light which is neither night nor
day. In the silences between their hesitating words, they bent forward
and listened. All was still--there was no distant sound of the
attorney-general's return or of the old doctor's coming. In the tense
stillness they could hear only the sad murmur of the river gliding under
the darkness and--now and then--the sudden hurrying of footsteps in the
chamber overhead where the wounded man lay.

And so a long, heavy hour dragged by. The leaden gray framed by the
doorway began to glimmer with a silvery pallor. The quicker breath of
the awakening world sent a heavier shower of leaves from the trees. The
birds still lingering among the cold, bare branches were already awake,
and calling cheerily to one another, as if the higher world in which
they lived was all untouched by the struggle and strife of this lower
human world. The heavy-hearted men in the great room of Cedar House
listened with the vague wistfulness that the happiness of bird voices
always brings to the troubled. They also heard the low trumpeting of the
swans as the breath of the morning swayed the rushes and that, too,
filled them with a deeper longing for peace. But suddenly the far-off
echo of a horse's rapid approach made them forget everything else. The
doctor was coming at last! As one man, the three men sprang to open the
door, and leapt out into the pallid daylight. The horseman was now near
by and in another moment they saw that the rider was not the doctor, nor
yet the attorney-general, but Philip Alston.

The priest shrank back with an uncontrollable recoil and then stood
still and silent, watching every movement of the tall figure which had
reined up and was dismounting with the ease of a boy. The judge and his
nephew had made an exclamation at the sight of him; but they were merely
surprised at the unusual hour of his appearance and he explained this at
once.

"Where is Ruth? What is wrong? Has anything happened?" he asked, turning
in visible agitation from one to another. "What was it that those men
on horseback brought here? I could barely make out something moving this
way. Has anything happened to Ruth? The light was dim, and I was a long
way off. I was coming from the river where I had been attending to the
loading of a boat, and so happened to see that something was