m, he was dimly conscious of the
darkness that was settling about him. Quicker and quicker grew his pace,
and at last he almost broke into a run as the heavy pall of a large
black cloud swept up over the zenith, and wiped from the heavens the
last remnant of blue sky. One drop fell, then another, then a slow,
heavy patter, that bent double the leaves they fell upon, as if a shower
of lead had descended upon the heavily writhing forest. The wind had
risen, too, and the vast aisles of that clear and beautiful wood
thundered with the swaying of boughs, and the crash here and there of an
old and falling limb. But the lightning delayed.

The blindest or most abstracted man could be ignorant no longer of what
all this turmoil meant. Stopping in the path along which he had been
speeding, Mr. Byrd glanced before him and behind, in a momentary
calculation of distances, and deciding he could not regain the terminus
before the storm burst, pushed on toward the hut.

He reached it just as the first flash of lightning darted down through
the heavy darkness, and was about to fling himself against the door,
when something--was it the touch of an invisible hand, or the crash of
awful thunder which at this instant plowed up the silence of the forest
and woke a pandemonium of echoes about his head?--stopped him.

He never knew. He only realized that he shuddered and drew back, with a
feeling of great disinclination to enter the low building before him,
alone; and that presently taking advantage of another loud crash of
falling boughs, he crept around the corner of the hut, and satisfied his
doubts by looking into the small, square window opening to the west.

He found there was ample reason for all the hesitation he had felt. A
man was sitting there, who, at the first glimpse, appeared to him to be
none other than Craik Mansell. But reason soon assured him this could
not be, though the shape, the attitude--that old attitude of despair
which he remembered so well--was so startlingly like that of the man
whose name was uppermost in his thoughts, that he recoiled in spite of
himself.

A second flash swept blinding through the wood. Mr. Byrd advanced his
head and took another glance at the stranger. It _was_ Mr. Mansell. No
other man would sit so quiet and unmoved during the rush and clatter of
a terrible storm.

Look! not a hair of his head has stirred, not a movement has taken place
in the hands clasped so convulsively beneath his br