r in the house below was opened, and two figures
came forth as if borne upon the flood of genial light that poured
itself over the greensward.

They were Silverthorn and Ida.

How graceful they looked, moving together,--the buoyant, beautiful
maiden and the slender-shaped young man, who even at a distance
impressed one with something ideal in his pose and motion! Vibbard
looked at them with a bewildered, shadowy sort of pleasure; but all at
once he saw that Silverthorn held Ida's hand in his and had laid his
other hand on her shoulder. A frightful tumult of feeling assailed
him. The small, carved serpents on his stick seemed suddenly to drive
their fangs into his own palm, as he clutched the handle tighter.

For an instant he hesitated and hoped. Then the pair, passing along
below the broken wall, came within ear-shot, and he heard his old boon
comrade saying, in a pleading voice:

"But you have never quite promised me, Ida! You have never fully
engaged yourself to me."

Partly from a feeling of strangulation, partly with a blind impulse to
do something violent, Vibbard clutched himself about the throat, tore
furiously at his collar till it gave way, and, in a paroxysm little
short of madness, he turned and fled--he did not know where nor
how--through the darkness.

It seemed to him for a long time as if he was marching and reeling on
through the woods, stumbling over roots and fallen trunks, breaking
out into open fields upon the full run, then pursuing a road, or
rambling hopelessly down by the ebon-hued river,--and as if he was
doing all this with some great and urgent purpose of rescuing somebody
from a terrible fate. He must go on foot,--there was no other
way,--and everything depended on his getting to a certain point by a
certain time. The worst of it was, he did not know where it was that
he must go to! Then, all at once, he became aware that he had made a
mistake. It was not some one else who was to be saved. It was
_himself_. He must rescue himself--

From what?

At this, he came to a pause and tried to think. He stood on a
commanding spot, somewhere not far from Stansby, though he could not
identify it. The moon was up, and the wide, leafy landscape was spread
out in utter silence for miles around him. For a brief space, while
collecting his thoughts, he saw everything as it was. Then, as if
at the stroke of a wand, horrible deformity appeared to fall upon
the whole scene; the thousand trees below