cent wood. There under a spreading oak he flung himself
prone upon the earth, and buried his face in his hands. A seething
turmoil of thoughts swept his mind. The past rose before him like a
panorama. All his married life rushed back upon him, and every memory
was regret and accusation.

"I might have been kinder to her, I might have been better," he
murmured, while the hot tears gushed from his eyes. "I might have
been so much better to her," he repeated over and over,--he, whose
whole thought had been to shut up his sorrow in his own heart and show
her only tenderness and consideration.

By and by he grew calmer and sat up, leaning against the tree and
looking out into vacancy with dim eyes that saw nothing. His heart was
desolate, emptied of everything. What was he to do? What was he to set
before himself? He had not loved her, but still she had been a part of
his life; with what was he to fill it now?

As he sat there depressed and troubled, a strange thing happened.

He was looking, as has been said, blindly into vacancy. It may have
been an optical illusion, it may have been a mere vagary born of an
over-wrought brain; but a picture formed before him. In the distance,
toward the west, he saw something that looked like a great arch of
stone, a natural bridge, rugged with crags and dark with pine. Beneath
it swept a wide blue river, and on it wild horsemen were crossing and
recrossing, with plumed hair and rude lances. Their faces were Indian,
yet of a type different from any he had ever seen. The bridge was in
the heart of a mighty mountain-range. On either side rose sharp and
lofty peaks, their sides worn by the action of water in some remote
age.

These details he noted as in a dream; then the strangeness of it all
burst upon him. Even as it did so, the vision dissolved; the bridge
wavered and passed away, the mountain-peaks sank in shadow. He leaped
to his feet and gazed eagerly. A fine mist seemed passing before his
sight; then he saw only the reach of hill and woodland, with the
morning light resting upon it.

While the vision faded, he felt springing up within him an
irrepressible desire to follow it. A mysterious fascination seized
him, a wild desire to seek the phantom bridge. His whole being was
swayed as by a supernatural power toward the west whence the vision
had passed. He started forward eagerly, then checked himself in
bewilderment. What could it mean?

In the nineteenth century, one similar