and beauty of
it all soothed him, and the rhythm of his own tramp, tramp, steadied his
nerves and relieved the tension at his throat. He began to relax from
jaw to instep, and presently found himself softly whistling one of the
late coon songs, with its quaint "rag-time," which had caught his ear
and held his memory ever since he had heard it, a week or two ago.

At a certain place the footpath broke and mingled with others. Glancing
up and around, he saw a wood at his side, and just here a cattle-gate in
the rail fence, through which a herd had evidently passed, not long
since, to be milked and housed in the home barn for the night. The gate
was left carelessly open, as if it did not matter now, and, lured by the
dark interior, he slipped in.

It took a nimble winding in and out to avoid tree-roots, underbrush, and
marshy tracts, till at length he came to an open glade by a small
stream. It impressed him how regularly the trees grew about this glade.
They seemed trimmed up just so high, like a hedge. After a moment's
thought, he discovered the reason. The trimming was done by the cattle,
and the length of their stretched necks determined the height of the
trimming. A gardener with clippers could not have made a neater job of
it.

Pleased with the beauty of the spot, he lingered some time. Nature's
charm was almost an unknown quantity to him, but it held him in close
bonds to-night. After a while, as it darkened, he rose from the fallen
log upon which he had been sitting, and began to follow the little
stream, still wrapped in far-away thoughts. The twilight had settled
into a night that was moonless, but had that luminosity often seen on
clear nights in late autumn. He could see all about him, even in the
wood. As he reached another somewhat open space, coming upon it silently
from behind a thick growth of underbrush, with only the narrow cow-path
to cut it, a sound arrested him, and, lying flat on the ground, he saw
the figure of a man. The sound was a groan.

CHAPTER XXVII.

NIGHT HAPPENINGS.

He stopped, paralyzed into rigidity for the instant, and a sobbing voice
broke upon him,

"Oh, if I could only know! Is she yours, or not? Why can't you come out
of space and answer me? I would have given my heart's blood for you, yet
it seems as if, all the time, I must seem to take yours. What was Rachel
to you, Will? Answer! Answer!"

The cry was almost a shriek, but Dalton knew the voice, and, after the
i