d not waste a shot;
and watching him, the dim outline, the sweeping sabre, the proud
prowess, a strange yearning pity seized Ray, and he had half the mind to
spare. In the midst of the shock and uproar there came to him a pulse of
the brain's double action; he seemed long ago to have loved, to have
admired, to have gloried in this splendid valor. But with the hint, and
the humanity of it, back poured the ardor of his sacred devotion, all
the impulsions of his passionate purpose: here was God's work! And then,
with one swift bound of magnificent daring and defiance, the horseman
confronted him, the fore-feet of his steed planted firmly half up the
abatis, and his steel making lightnings round about him. There was a
blinding flare of light full upon Ray's fiery form; in the sudden
succeeding darkness horseman and rider towered rigid like a monolith of
black marble. A great voice cried his name, a sabre went hurtling in one
shining crescent across the white arc of the waterfall. Too late! There
was another flare of light, but this time on the rider's face, a sound
like the rolling of the heavens together in a scroll, and Ray, in one
horrid, dizzy blaze, saw the broad gleam of the ivory brow, of the azure
fire in the eyes, heard the heavy, downfalling crash, and, leaping over
the abatis, deep into the midst of the slippery, raging death below,
seized and drew something away, and fell upon it prostrate. There, under
the tossing torrent, dragging himself up to the seal of their agony and
their reproach, Ray looked into those dead eyes, which, lifted beyond
the everlasting stars, felt not that he had crossed their vision.

Far away from outrage and disaster, many a weary stretch of travel, the
meadow-side cottage basked in the afternoon sunlight of late
Indian-summer. All the bare sprays of its shadowing limes quivered in
the warmth of their purple life against a divine depth of heaven, and
the woody distances swathed themselves in soft blue smoke before the
sighing south-wind.

Round the girl who sat on the low door-stone, with idle hands crossed
before her, puffs of ravishing resinous fragrance floated and fainted.
Two butterflies, that spread their broad yellow wings like detached
flakes of living sunshine stolen out of the sweet November weather,
fluttered between the glossy darkness of her hair and a little
posthumous rose, that, blowing beside the door, with time only half to
unfold its white petals, surveyed the world