sort the
preceding night. As I stood at my diamond-paned lattice still peering
and peeping to make out what this might be, a great bank of clouds
rolled slowly away from the face of the moon, and a flood of cold, clear
light was poured down upon the silent bay and the long sweep of its
desolate shores. Then I saw what this was which haunted my doorstep. It
was he, the Russian. He squatted there like a gigantic toad, with his
legs doubled under him in strange Mongolian fashion, and his eyes fixed
apparently upon the window of the room in which the young girl and the
housekeeper slept. The light fell upon his upturned face, and I saw
once more the hawk-like grace of his countenance, with the single
deeply-indented line of care upon his brow, and the protruding beard
which marks the passionate nature. My first impulse was to shoot him
as a trespasser, but, as I gazed, my resentment changed into pity and
contempt. "Poor fool," I said to myself, "is it then possible that you,
whom I have seen looking open-eyed at present death, should have your
whole thoughts and ambition centred upon this wretched slip of a girl--a
girl, too, who flies from you and hates you. Most women would love
you--were it but for that dark face and great handsome body of
yours--and yet you must needs hanker after the one in a thousand who
will have no traffic with you." As I returned to my bed I chuckled much
to myself over this thought. I knew that my bars were strong and my
bolts thick. It mattered little to me whether this strange man spent his
night at my door or a hundred leagues off, so long as he was gone by the
morning. As I expected, when I rose and went out there was no sign of
him, nor had he left any trace of his midnight vigil.

It was not long, however, before I saw him again. I had been out for a
row one morning, for my head was aching, partly from prolonged stooping,
and partly from the effects of a noxious drug which I had inhaled the
night before. I pulled along the coast some miles, and then, feeling
thirsty, I landed at a place where I knew that a fresh water stream
trickled down into the sea. This rivulet passed through my land, but the
mouth of it, where I found myself that day, was beyond my boundary line.
I felt somewhat taken aback when rising from the stream at which I had
slaked my thirst I found myself face to face with the Russian. I was
as much a trespasser now as he was, and I could see at a glance that he
knew it.

"I