th his foot as if he would spurn him
over the cliff.

As suddenly the moment passed; he drew back in shame and looked down at
his hands, blood-guilty hands as he knew them to be, and, with lowered
head, he moved swiftly away.

He was a youth again, hungry and sad, stumbling along the untrodden way,
avoiding the beaten path, yet unerringly taking his course toward the
cleft rock at the head of the fall behind the great holly tree. It was
not the food Cassandra had promised him that he wanted now, but to look
into the eyes of one who would pity and love him. Heartsick and weary as
he never had been in all his young life, lonely beyond bearing, he
hurried along.

As he forced a path through the undergrowth, he heard the sound of a
mountain stream, and, seeking it, he followed along its rocky bed,
leaping from one huge block of stone to another, and swinging himself
across by great overhanging sycamore boughs, drawing, by its many
windings, nearer and nearer to the spot where it precipitated itself
over the mountain wall. Ever the noise of the water grew louder, until
at last, making a slight detour, he came upon the very edge of the
descent, where he could look down and see his home nestled in the cove
at the foot of the fall, the blue smoke curling upward from its great
chimney.

He seated himself upon a jutting rock well screened by laurel shrubs on
all sides but the one toward the fall. There, his knees clasped about
with his arms, and his chin resting upon them, he sat and watched.

Behind the leafage and tangle of bare stems and twigs, he was so far
above and so directly over the spot on which his gaze was fixed as to be
out of the usual range of sight from below, thus enabling him to see
plainly what was transpiring about the house and sheds, without himself
being seen.

Long and patiently he waited. Once a dog barked,--his own dog Nig. Some
one must be approaching. What if the little creature should seek him out
and betray him! He quivered with the thought. The day before he had
driven him down the mountain, beating him off whenever he returned.
Should the animal persist in tracking him, he would kill him.

He peered more eagerly down, and saw little Hoyle run out of the cow
shed and twist himself this way and that to see up and down the road.
Both the child and the dog seemed excited. Yes, there they were, three
horsemen coming along the highway. Now they were dismounting and
questioning the boy. Now they