s snap
beneath the weight of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin
hard by, and came in a great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the
snowy bleak wintry space. He suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like
a deer through the woods.

Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood.
In this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a
fading amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque
gray sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows
borrowed from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley
of East Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy
suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet
pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley,
and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry
aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an
isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its
fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and
advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and
beneath it. The old hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a
gaunt gable protruded and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more
was submerged.

A horse's head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were
empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row,
hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building.
The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at
ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his
quarters was under way.

With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He
was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall
and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of