In Alan Ynys found all that her heart craved. She discovered this nearly too late. A year before this last home-coming of her cousin, she had been formally betrothed to Andrik de Morvan, the friend of her childhood and for whom she had a true affection, and in that betrothal had been quietly glad. When, one midwinter day, she and Alan walked through an upland wood and looked across the snowy pastures and the white slopes beyond, all aglow with sunlight, and then suddenly turned toward each other, andsaw in the eyes of each a wonderful light, and the next moment were heart to heart, it was all a revelation.
For long she did not realize what it meant. On that unforgettable day, when they had left the forest ridge and were near Kerival again, she had sat for a time on one of the rude cattle-gates which are frequent in these woodlands, while Alan had leant beside her, looking up with eyes too eloquent, and speaking of what he dreamed, with sweet stammering speech of new found love.
How she had struggled, mentally, with her duty, as she conceived it, toward Andrik. She was betrothed to him; he loved her; she loved him too, although even already she realized that there is a love which is not only invincible and indestructible but that comes unsought, has no need for human conventions, is neither moral nor immoral but simply all-potent and thenceforth sovereign. To yield to that may be wrong; but, if so, it is wrong to yield to the call of hunger, the cry of thirst, the whisper of sleep, the breath of ill, the summons of death. It comes, andthat is all. The green earth may be another Endymion, and may dream that the cold moonshine is all in all; but when the sun rises, and a new heat and glory and passion of life are come, then Endymion simply awakes.
It had been a sadness to her to have to tell Andrik she no longer loved him as he was fain to be loved. He would have no finality, then; he held her to the bond—and in Brittany there is a pledge akin to the "hand-fast" of the north, which makes a betrothal almost as binding as marriage.
Andrik de Morvan had gone to the Marquis de Kerival, and told him what Ynys had said.
"She is but a girl," the seigneur remarked coldly. "And you are wrong in thinking she can be in love with any one else. There is no one for whom she can care so much as for you; no one whom she has met with whom she could mate; no one with whom I would allow her to mate."
"But that matters little, if she will not marry me!" the young man had urged.
"My daughter is my daughter, De Morvan. I cannot compel her to marry you. I know her well enough to be sure that she would ignore any command of this kind. But women are fools; and one can get them to do what one wants, in one way if not in another. Let her be a while."
"But the betrothal!"
"Let it stand. But do not press it. Indeed, go away for a year. You are heir to your mother's estates in Touraine. Go there, work, learn all you can. Meanwhile, write occasionally to Ynys. Do not address her as your betrothed, but at the same time let her see that it is the lover who writes. Then, after a few months, confide that your absence is due solely to her, that you cannot live without her; and that, after a vain exile, you write to ask if you may come and see her. They are all the same. It is the same thing with my mares, for which Kerival is so famous. Some are wild, some are docile, some skittish, some vicious, some good, a few flawless—but.... Well, they are all mares. One knows. A mare is not a sphinx. Thesecomplexities of which we hear so much, what are they? Spindrift. The sea is simply the sea, all the same. The tide ebbs, though the poets reverse nature. Ebb and flow, the lifting wind, the lifted wave; we know the way of it all. It has its mystery, its beauty; but we don't really expect to see a nereid in the hollow of the wave, or to catch the echo of a triton in the call of the wind. As for Venus Anadyomene, the foam of which she was made is the froth in poets' brains. Believe me, Annaik, my friend, women are simply women; creatures not yet wholly tamed, but tractable in the main, delightful, valuable often, but certainly not worth the tribute of passion and pain they obtain from foolish men like yourself."
With this worldly wisdom Andrik de Morvan had gone home, unconvinced. He loved Ynys; and sophistries were an ineffectual balm.
But as for Ynys, she had long made up her mind. Betrothal or no betrothal, she belonged now only to one man, and that man, Alan de Kerival. She was his and his alone,by every natural right. How could she help the accident by which she had cared for Andrik before she loved Alan? Now, indeed, it would be sacrilege to be other than wholly Alan's. Was her heart not his, and her life with her heart, and with both her deathless devotion?
Alan, she knew, trusted her absolutely. Before he went back to Paris, after their love was no longer a secret, he had never once asked her to forfeit any thing of her intimacy with Andrik, nor had he even urged the open cancelling of the betrothal. But she was well aware his own absolute loyalty involved for him a like loyalty from her; and she knew that forgiveness does not belong to those natures which stake all upon a single die.
And so the matter stood thus still. Ynys and Andrik de Morvan were nominally betrothed; and not only the Marquis and the Marquise de Kerival, but Andrik himself, looked upon the bond as absolute.
Perhaps Lois de Kerival was not without some suspicion as to how matters were between the betrothed pair. Certainly sheknew that Ynys was not one who would give up any real or imagined happiness because of a conventional arrangement or on account of any conventional duty.
In Alan, Ynys found all that he found in her. When she looked at him, she wondered how she could ever have dreamed of Andrik as a lover, for Alan was all that Andrik was not. How proud and glad she felt because of his great height and strength, his vivid features with their gray-blue eyes and spirituel expression, his wavy brown hair, a very type of youthful and beautiful manhood! Still more she revered and loved the inner Alan whom she knew so well, and recognized with a proud humility that this lover of hers, whom the great Daniel Darc had spoken of as a man of genius, was not only her knight, but her comrade, her mate, her ideal.
Often the peasants of Kerival had speculated if the young seigneur would join hands with her or with Annaik. Some hoped the one, some the other; but those who knew Alan otherwise than merely by sight felt certain that Ynys was the future bride.
"They are made for each other," old Jeanne Mael, the village authority, was wont to exclaim; "and the good God will bring them together soon or late. 'Tis a fair, sweet couple they are; none so handsome anywhere. That tall, dark lass will be a good mother when her hour comes; an' the child o' him an' her should be the bonniest in the whole wide world."
With that all who saw them together agreed.
THE WALKER IN THE NIGHT
It was an hour from midnight when Alan rose, opened a window, and looked out. The storm was over. He could see the stars glistening like silver fruit among the upper branches of the elms. Behind the great cypress known as the Fate of Kerival there was a golden radiance, as though a disk of radiant bronze were being slowly wheeled round and round, invisible itself but casting a quivering gleam upon the fibrous undersides of the cypress spires. Soon the moon would lift upward, and her paling gold become foam-white along the wide reaches of the forest.
The wind had suddenly fallen. In this abrupt lapse into silence there was something mysterious. After so much violence, after that wild, tempestuous cry, such stillness! There was no more than a faint rustlingsound, as though invisible feet were stealthily flying along the pathway of the upper boughs and through the dim defiles in the dense coverts of oak and beech in the very heart of the woods. Only, from hitherward of the unseen dunes floated a melancholy, sighing refrain, the echo of the eddying sea-breath among the pines. Beyond the last sands, the deep, hollow boom of the sea itself.
To stay indoors seemed to Alan a wanton forfeiture of beauty. The fragrance of the forest intoxicated him. Spring was come, indeed. This wild storm had ruined nothing, for at its fiercest it had swept overhead; and on the morrow the virginal green world would be more beautiful than ever. Everywhere the green fire of spring would be litten anew. A green flame would pass from meadow to hedgerow, from hedgerow to the tangled thickets of bramble and dog-rose, from the underwoods to the inmost forest glades. Everywhere song would be to the birds, everywhere young life would pulse, everywhere the rhythm of a new rapture would run rejoicing. The miracle of spring would beaccomplished in the sight of all men, of all birds and beasts, of all green life. Each, in its kind, would have a swifter throb in the red blood or the vivid sap.
No, he could not wait. No, Alan added to himself with a smile, not even though to sleep in the House of Kerival was to be beneath the same roof as Ynys—to be but a few yards, a passage, a corridor away. Ah! for sure, he could dream his dream as well out there among the gleaming boughs, in the golden sheen of the moon, under the stars. Was there not the silence for deep peace, and the voice of the unseen sea for echo to the deep tides of love which surged obscurely in his heart? Yes, he would go out to that beautiful redemption of the night. How often, in fevered Paris, he had known that healing, either when his gaze was held by the quiet stars, as he kept his hours-long vigil, or when he escaped westward along the banks of the Seine, and could wander undisturbed across grassy spaces or under shadowy boughs!
In the great hall of the Manor he found white-haired Matieu asleep in his wickerchair. The old man silently opened the heavy oaken door, and, with a smile which somewhat perplexed Alan, bowed to him as he passed forth.
Could it be a space only of a few hours that divided him from his recent arrival, he wondered. The forest was no longer the same. Then it was swept by the wind, lashed by the rains, and was everywhere tortured into a tempestuous music. Now it was so still, save for a ceaseless faint dripping from wet leaves and the conduits of a myriad sprays and branches, that he could hear the occasional shaking of the wings of hidden birds, ruffling out their plumage because of the moonlit quietudes that were come again.
And then, too, he had seen Ynys; had held her hand in his; had looked in her beautiful, hazel-green eyes, dusky and wonderful as a starlit gloaming because of the depth of her dear love; had pressed his lips to hers, and felt the throbbing of her heart against his own. There, in the forest-edge, it was difficult to realize all this. It would be time to turn soon, to walk back along the sycamore-margined Seineembankment, to reach the Tour de l'Ile and be at his post in the observatory again. Then he glanced backward, and saw a red light shining from the room where the Marquis de Kerival sat up late night after night, and he wondered if Ynys were still there, or if she were now in her room and asleep, or if she lay in a waking dream.
For a time he stared at this beacon. Then, troubled by many thoughts, but most by his love, he moved slowly into one of the beech avenues which radiated from the fantastic mediæval sun-dial at the end of the tulip garden in front of the château.
While the moon slowly lifted from branch to branch a transient stir of life came into the forest.
Here and there he heard low cries, sometimes breaking into abrupt eddies of arrested song; thrushes, he knew, ever swift to slide their music out against any tide of light. Once or twice a blackcap, in one of the beeches near the open, sang so poignantly a brief strain that he thought it that of a nightingale. Later, in an oak glade, he heard the unmistakable song itself.
The sea sound came hollowly under the boughs like a spent billow. Instinctively he turned that way, and so crossed a wide glade that opened on the cypress alley to the west of the château.
Just as he emerged upon this glade he thought he saw a stooping figure glide swiftly athwart the northern end of it and disappear among the cypresses. Startled, he stood still.
No one stirred. Nothing moved. He could hear no sound save the faint sighing of the wind-eddy among the pines, the dull rhythmic beat of the sea falling heavily upon the sands.
"It must have been a delusion," he muttered. Yet, for the moment, he had felt certain that the crouching figure of a man had moved swiftly out of the shadow of the solitary wide-spreading thorn he knew so well, and had disappeared into the darker shadow of the cypress alley.
After all, what did it matter? It could only be some poor fellow poaching. With a smile, Alan remembered how often he had sinned likewise. He would listen, however,and give the man a fright, for he knew that Tristran de Kerival was stern in his resentment against poachers, partly because he was liberal in certain woodland-freedom he granted, on the sole condition that none of the peasants ever came within the home domain.
Soon, however, he was convinced that he was mistaken. Deep silence prevailed everywhere. Almost, he fancied, he could hear the soft fall of the dew. A low whirring sound showed that a night-jar had already begun his summer wooing. Now that, as he knew from Ynys, the cuckoo was come, and that the swallows had suddenly multiplied from a score of pioneers into a battalion of ever-flying darts; now that he had listened to the nightingales calling through the moonlit woods and had heard the love-note of the night-jar, the hot weather must be come at last—that glorious tide of golden life which flows from April to June and makes them the joy of the world.
Slowly he walked across the glade. At the old thorn he stopped, and leaned a whileagainst its rugged, twisted bole, recalling incident after incident associated with it.
It was strangely restful there. Around him was the quiet sea of moonlight; yonder, behind the cypresses and the pine-crowned dunes, was the quiet sea of moving waters; yet, in the one, there was scarce less of silence than in the other. Ah! he remembered abruptly, on just such a night, years ago, he and Annaik had stood long there, hand in hand, listening to a nightingale. What a strange girl she was, even then! Well he recalled how, at the end of the song and when the little brown singer had slipped from its bough, like a stone slung from a sling, Annaik had laughed, though he knew not at what, and had all at once unfastened her hair, and let its tawny bronze-red mass fall about her shoulders. She was so beautiful and wild that he had clasped her in his arms, and had kissed her again and again. And Annaik ... oh, he remembered, half shyly, half exultantly ... she had laughed again, but more low, and had tied the long drifts of her hair around his neck like a blood-red scarf.
It gave him a strange emotion to recall all this. Did Annaik also think of it ever, he wondered? Then, too, had they not promised somewhat to each other? Yes ... Annaik had said: "One night we shall come here again, and then, if you do not love me as much as you do now, I shall strangle you with my hair: and if you love me more we shall go away into the forest, and never return, or not for long, long; but if you do not love me at all, then you are to tell me so, and I will——"
"What?" he had asked, when she stopped abruptly.
At that, however, she had said no more as to what was in her mind, but had asked him to carve upon the thorn the "A" of her name and the "A" of his into a double "A." Yes, of course, he had done this. Where was it? he pondered. Surely midway on the southward side, for then as now the moonlight would be there.
With an eagerness of which he was conscious he slipped from where he leaned, and examined the bole of the tree. A heavy branchintervened. This he caught and withheld, and the light flooded upon the gnarled trunk.
With a start, Alan almost relinquished the branch. There, unmistakable, was a large carven "A," but not only was it the old double "A" made into a single letter, but clearly the change had been made quite recently, apparently within a few hours. Moreover, it was now linked to another letter. The legend ran: "A & J."
Puzzled, he looked close. There could be no mistake. The cutting was recent. The "J," indeed, might have been that moment done. Suddenly an idea flashed into his mind. He stooped and examined the mossed roots. Yes, there were the fragments. He took one and put it between his teeth; the wood was soft, and had the moisture of fibre recently severed.
Who was "J"? Alan pondered over every name he could think of. He knew no one whose baptismal name began thus, with the exception of Jervaise de Morvan, the brother of Andrik, and he was married and resident in distant Pondicherry. Otherwisethere was but Jak Bourzak, the woodcutter—a bent, broken-down old man who could not have cut the letters for the good reason that he was unable to write and was so ignorant that, even in that remote region, he was called Jak the Stupid. Alan was still pondering over this when suddenly the stillness was broken by the loud screaming of peacocks.
Kerival was famous for these birds, of which the peasantry stood in superstitious awe. Indeed, a legend was current to the effect that Tristran de Kerival maintained those resplendent creatures because they were the souls of his ancestors, or such of them as before death had not been able to gain absolution for their sins. When they were heard crying harshly before rain or at sundown, or sometimes in the moonlight, the hearers shuddered. "The lost souls of Kerival" became a saying, and there were prophets here and there who foreboded ill for Tristran the Silent, or some one near and dear to him, whenever that strange clamor rang forth unexpectedly.
Alan himself was surprised, startled. Thenight was so still, no further storm was imminent, and the moon had been risen for some time. Possibly the peacocks had strolled into the cypress alley, to strut to and fro in the moonshine, as their wont was in their wooing days, and two of them had come into jealous dispute.
Still that continuous harsh tumult seemed rather to have the note of alarm than of quarrel. Alan walked to the seaward side of the thorn, but still kept within its shadow.
The noise was now not only clamant but startling. The savage screaming, like that of barbaric trumpets, filled the night.
Swiftly the listener crossed the glade, and was soon among the cypresses. There, while the dull thud of the falling seas was more than ever audible, the screams of the peacocks were so insistent that he had ears for these alone.
At the eastern end of the alley the glade broke away into scattered pines, and from these swelled a series of low dunes. Alan could see them clearly from where he stood, under the boughs of a huge yew, one of severalthat grew here and there among their solemn, columnar kin.
His gaze was upon this open space when, abruptly, he started. A tall, slim figure, coming from the shore, moved slowly inland across the dunes.
Who could this walker in the dark be? The shadowy Walker in the Night herself, mayhap; the dreaded soulless woman who wanders at dead of night through forests, or by desolate shores, or by the banks of the perilousmarais.
Often he had heard of her. When any man met this woman, his fate depended on whether he saw her before she caught sight of him. If she saw him first, she had but to sing her wild, strange song, and he would have to go to her; and when he was before her two flames would come out of her eyes, and one flame would burn up his life as though it were dry tinder, and the other would wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl, and she would take it and live with it in a cavern underground for a year and a day. And on that last day she would let it go, as a hare is letgo a furlong beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly like a windy shadow from glade to glade or from dune to dune, in the vain hope to reach a wayside Calvary; but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy Tree would almost be reached; then, with a gliding swiftness, like a flood racing down a valley, the Walker in the Night would be alongside the fugitive. Now and again unhappy night-farers—unhappy they, for sure, for never does weal remain with any one who hears what no human ear should hearken—would be startled by a sudden laughing in the darkness. This was when some such terrible chase had happened, and when the creature of the night had taken the captive soul, in the last moments of the last hour of the last day of its possible redemption, and rent it this way and that, as a hawk scatters the feathered fragments of its mutilated quarry.
Alan thought of this wild legend, and shuddered. Years ago he had been foolhardy enough to wish to meet the phantom, to see her before she saw him, and to put a spell upon her. For, if this were possible, he couldcompel her to whisper some of her secret lore, and she could give him spells to keep him scathless till old age.
But as, with fearful gaze, he stared at the figure which so leisurely moved toward the cypress alley, he was puzzled by some vague resemblance, by something familiar. The figure was that of a woman, unmistakably; and she moved as though she were in a dream.
But who could it be, there, in that lonely place, at that hour of the night? Who would venture or care....
In a flash all was clear. It was Annaik!
There was no room for doubt. He might have known her lithe walk, her wildwood grace, her peculiar carriage; but before recognition of these had come, he had caught a glimpse of her hair in the moonlight. It was like burnished brass, in that yellow shine. There was no other such hair in the world, he believed.
But ... Annaik! What could she be doing there? How had she been able to leave the château; when had she stolen forth; wherehad she wandered; whither was she going; to what end?
These and other thoughts stormed through Alan's mind. Almost—he muttered below his breath—almost he would rather have seen the Walker in the Night.
As she drew nearer he could see her as clearly as though it were daylight. She appeared to be thinking deeply, and ever and again be murmuring disconnected phrases. His heart smote him when he saw her, twice, raise her arms and then wring her hands as if in sore straits of sorrow.
He did not stir. He would wait, he thought. It might add to Annaik's strange grief, if grief it were, to betray his presence. Again, was it possible that she was there to meet some one—to encounter the "J" whose initial was beside her own on the old thorn? How pale she was! he noticed. A few yards away her dress caught; she hesitated, slowly disengaged herself, but did not advance again. For the third time she wrung her hands.
What could it mean? Alan was about to move forward when he heard her voice:
"Oh, Alan, Alan, Alan!"
What ... had she seen him? He flushed there in the shadow, and words rose to his lips. Then he was silent, for she spoke again:
"I hate her ... I hate her ... not for herself, no, no, no ... but because she has taken you from me. Why does Ynys have you, all of you, when I have loved you all along? None of us knew any thing—none, till last Noël. Then we knew; only, neither you nor Ynys knew that I loved you as a soul in hell loves the memory of its earthly joy."
Strange words, there in that place, at that hour; but far stranger the passionless voice in which the passionate words were uttered. Bewildered, Alan leaned forward, intent. The words had waned to a whisper, but were now incoherent. Fragmentary phrases, irrelevant words, what could it all mean?
Suddenly an idea made him start. He moved slightly, so as to catch the full flood of a moonbeam as it fell on Annaik's face.
Yes, he was right. Her eyes were open, but were fixed in an unseeing stare. Forthe first time, too, he noted that she was clad simply in a long dressing-gown. Her feet were bare, and were glistening with the wet they had gathered; on her lustrous hair, nothing but the moonlight.
He had remembered. Both Annaik and Ynys had a tendency to somnambulism, a trait inherited from their father. It had been cured years ago, he had understood. But here—here was proof that Annaik at any rate was still subject to that mysterious malady of sleep.
That she was absolutely trance-bound he saw clearly. But what he should do—that puzzled, that bewildered him.
Slowly Annaik, after a brief hesitancy when he fancied she was about to awake, moved forward again.
She came so close that almost she brushed against him; would have done so, indeed, but that he was hidden from contact as well as from sight by the boughs of the yew, which on that side swept to the ground.
Alan put out his hand. Then he withdrew it. No, he thought, he would let her go unmolested,and, if possible, unawaked: but he would follow her, lest evil befell. She passed. His nerves thrilled. What was this strange emotion, that gave him a sensation almost as though he had seen his own wraith? But different ... for, oh—he could not wait to think about that, he muttered.
He was about to stoop and emerge from the yew-boughs when he heard a sound which made him stop abruptly.
It was a step; of that he felt sure. And at hand, too. The next moment he was glad he had not disclosed himself, for a crouching figure stealthily followed Annaik.
Surely that was the same figure he had seen cross the glade, the figure that had slipped from the thorn?
If so, could it be the person who had cut the letter "J" on the bark of the tree? The man kept so much in the shadow that it was difficult to obtain a glimpse of his face. Alan waited. In a second or two he would have to pass the yew.
Just before the mysterious pursuer reached the old tree, he stopped. Alan furtivelyglanced to his left. He saw that Annaik had suddenly halted. She stood intent, as though listening. Possibly she had awaked. He saw her lips move. She spoke, or called something; what, he could not hear because of the intermittent screaming of the peacocks.
When he looked at the man in the shadow he started. A moonbeam had penetrated the obscurity, and the face was white against the black background of a cypress.
Alan recognized the man in a moment. It was Jud Kerbastiou, the forester. What ... was it possible: couldhebe the "J" who had linked his initial with that of Annaik?
It was incredible. The man was not only a boor, but one with rather an ill repute. At any rate, he was known to be a poacher as well as a woodlander of the old Breton kind—men who would never live save in the forest, any more than a gypsy would become a clerk and live in a street.
It was said among the peasants of Kerival that his father, old Iouenn Kerbastiou, the charcoal burner, was an illegitimate brother of the late Marquis—so that Jud, or Judik, ashe was generally called, was a blood-relation of the great folk at the château. Once this had been hinted to the Marquis Tristran. It was for the first and last time. Since then, Jud Kerbastiou had become more morose than ever, and was seldom seen among his fellows. When not with his infirm old father, at the hut in the woods that were to the eastward of the forest-hamlet of Ploumael, he was away in the densely wooded reaches to the south. Occasionally he was seen upon the slopes of the Black Hills, but this was only in winter, when he crossed over into Upper Brittany with a mule-train laden with cut fagots.
That he was prowling about the home domain of Kerival was itself ominous; but that in this stealthy manner he should be following Annaik was to Allan a matter of genuine alarm. Surely the man could mean no evil against one of the Big House, and one, too, so much admired, and in a certain way loved, as Annaik de Kerival? And yet, the stealthy movements of the peasant, his crouching gait, his patient dogging of hersteps—and this, doubtless, ever sinceshehad crossed the glade from the forest to the cypresses—all this had a menacing aspect.
At that moment the peacocks ceased their wild miaulling. Low and clear, Annaik's voice same thrillingly along the alley:
"Alan! Alan! Oh, Alan, darling, are you there?"
His heart beat. Then a flush sprang to his brow, as with sudden anger he heard Jud Kerbastiou reply, in a thick, muffled tone:
"Yes, yes, ... and, and I love you, Annaik!"
Possibly the sleeper heard and understood. Even at that distance Alan saw the light upon her face, the light from within.
Judik the peasant slowly advanced. His stealthy tread was light as that of a fox. He stopped when he was within a yard of Annaik. "Annaik," he muttered hoarsely, "Annaik, it was I who was out among the beeches in front of the château while the storm was raging. Sure you must have known it; else, why would you come out? I love you, whitewoman. I am only a peasant ... but I love you, Annaik de Kerival, I love you—I love you—I love you!"
Surely she was on the verge of waking! The color had come back to her white face, her lips moved, as though stirred by a breath from within. Her hands were clasped, and the fingers intertwisted restlessly.
Kerbastiou was so wrought that he did not hear steps behind him as Alan moved swiftly forward.
"Sure, you will be mine at last," the man cried hoarsely, "mine, and none to dispute ... ay, and this very night, too."
Slowly Jud put out an arm. His hand almost touched that of Annaik. Suddenly he was seized from behind, and a hand was claspt firmly upon his mouth. He did not see who his unexpected assailant was, but he heard the whisper that was against his ear:
"If you make a sound, I will strangle you to death."
With a nod, he showed that he understood. "If I let go for the moment, will you comeback under the trees here, where she cannot see or hear us?"
Another nod.
Alan relaxed his hold, but did not wholly relinquish his grip. Kerbastiou turned and looked at him.
"Oh, it'syou!" he muttered, as he followed his assailant into the shadow some yards back.
"Yes, Judik Kerbastiou, it is I, Alan de Kerival."
"Well, what do you want?"
"What do I want? How dare you be so insolent, fellow? you, who have been following a defenceless woman!"
"What haveyoubeen doing?"
"I ... oh, of course I have been following Mlle. Annaik also ... but that was ... that was ... to protect her."
"And is it not possible I might follow her for the same reason?"
"It is not the same thing at all, Judik Kerbastiou, and you know it. In the first place you have no right to be here at all. In the next, I am Mlle. Annaik's cousin, and——"
"And I am her lover."
Alan stared at the man in sheer amaze. He spoke quietly and assuredly, nor seemed in the least degree perturbed.
"But ... but ... why, Kerbastiou, it is impossible!"
"What is impossible?"
"That Annaik could loveyou."
"I did not say she loved me. I said I was her lover."
"And you believe that you, a peasant, a man held in ill repute even among your fellow-peasants, a homeless woodlander, can gain the love of the daughter of your seigneur, of a woman nurtured as she has been?"
"You speak like a book, as the saying is, M. de Kerival." Judik uttered the words mockingly, and with raised voice. Annaik, who was still standing as one entranced, heard it: for she whispered again, "Alan! Alan! Alan!"
"Hush, man! she will hear. Listen, Judik, I don't want to speak harshly. You know me. Every one here does. You must be well aware that I am the last person to despise you or any man because you are poorand unfortunate. But youmustsee that such a love as this of yours is madness."
"All love is madness."
"Oh, yes; of course! But look you, Judik, what right have you to be here at all, in the home domain, in the dead of night?"
"You love Ynys de Kerival?"
"Yes ... well, yes, I do love her; but what then? What is that to you?"
"Well, I love Annaik. I am here by the same right as you are."
"You forget.Iam welcome. You come by stealth. Do you mean for a moment to say that you are here to meet Mlle. Annaik by appointment?"
The man was silent.
"Judik Kerbastiou!"
"Yes?"
"You are a coward. You followed this woman whom you say you love with intent to rob her."
"You are a fool, Alan de Kerival."
Alan raised his arm. Then, ashamed, he let it fall.
"Will you go? Will you go now, at once,or shall I wake Mlle. Annaik, and tell her what I have seen—and from what I believe I have saved her?"
"No, you need not wake her, nor tell her any thing. I know she has never even given me a thought."
Suddenly the man bowed his head. A sob burst through the dark.
Alan put his hand on his shoulder.
"Judik! Judik Kerbastiou! I am sorry for you from my heart. But go ... go now, at once. Nothing shall be said of this. No one shall know any thing. If you wish me to tell my cousin, I will. Then she can see you or not, as she may wish."
"I go. But ... yes, tell her. To-morrow. Tell her to-morrow. Only I would not have hurt her. Tell her that. I go now.Adiou."
With that Judik Kerbastiou lifted his shaggy head, and turned his great black, gypsy-wild eyes upon Alan.
"She lovesyou," he said simply. Then he stepped lightly over the path, passed between the cypresses, and moved out across the glade. Alan watched his dark figure slide throughthe moonlight. He traversed the glade to the right of the thorn. For nearly half a mile he was visible; then he turned and entered the forest.
An hour later two figures moved, in absolute silence, athwart the sand-dunes beyond the cypress alley.
Hand in hand they moved. Their faces were in deep shadow, for the moonlight was now obscured by a league-long cloud.
When they emerged from the scattered pines to the seaward of the château, the sentinel peacocks saw them, and began once more their harsh, barbaric screams.
The twain unclasped their hands, and walked steadily forward, speaking no word, not once looking one at the other.
As they entered the yew-close at the end of the old garden of the château they were as shadows drowned in night. For some minutes they were invisible; though, from above, the moon shone upon their white faces and on their frozen stillness. The peacocks sullenly ceased.
Once more they emerged into the moon-dusk.As they neared the ivied gables of the west wing of the Manor the cloud drifted from the moon, and her white flood turned the obscurity into a radiance wherein every object stood forth as clear as at noon.
Alan's face was white as are the faces of the dead. His eyes did not once lift from the ground. But in Annaik's face was a flush, and her eyes were wild and beautiful as falling stars.
It was not an hour since she had wakened from her trance; not an hour, and yet already had Alan forgotten—forgotten her, and Ynys, and the storm, and the after calm. Of one thing he thought only, and that was of what Daniel Darc had once said to him laughingly: "If the old fables of astrology were true, your horoscope would foretell impossible things."
In absolute silence they moved up the long flight of stone stairs that led to the château; in absolute silence, they entered by the door which old Matieu had left ajar; in silence, they passed that unconscious sleeper; in silence, they crossed the landing where the corridors diverged.
Both stopped, simultaneously. Alan seemed about to speak, but his lips closed again without utterance.
Abruptly he turned. Without a word he passed along the corridor to the right, and disappeared in the obscurity.
Annaik stood a while, motionless, silent. Then she put her hand to her heart. On her impassive face the moonlight revealed nothing; only in her eyes there was a gleam as of one glad unto death.
Then she too passed, noiseless and swift as a phantom. Outside, on the stone terrace, Ys, the blind peacock, strode to and fro, uttering his prolonged, raucous screams. When, at last, he was unanswered by the peacocks in the cypress alley, his clamant voice no longer tore the silence.
The moon trailed her flood of light across the earth. It lay upon the waters, and was still a glory there when, through the chill quietudes of dawn, the stars waned one by one in the soft graying that filtered through the morning dusk. The new day was come.
VIA OSCURA
The day that followed this quiet dawn marked the meridian of spring. Thereafter the flush upon the blossoms would deepen; the yellow pass out of the green; and a deeper green involve the shoreless emerald sea of verdure which everywhere covered the brown earth, and swelled and lapsed in endlessly receding billows of forest and woodland. Up to that noon-tide height Spring had aspired, ever since she had shaken the dust of snow from her primrose-sandals; now, looking upon the way she had come, she took the hand of Summer—and both went forth as one, so that none should tell which was still the guest of the greenness.
This was the day when Alan and Ynys walked among the green alleys of the woods of Kerival, and when, through the deep gladnessthat was his for all the strange, gnawing pain in his mind, in his ears echoed the haunting line of Rimbaud, "Then, in the violet forest all a-bourgeon, Eucharis said to me: 'It is Spring.'"
Through the first hours of the day Alan had been unwontedly silent. Ynys had laughed at him with loving eyes, but had not shown any shadow of resentment. His word to the effect that his journey had tired him, and that he had not slept at all, was enough to account for his lack of buoyant joy.
But, in truth, Ynys did not regret this, since it had brought a still deeper intensity of love into Alan's eyes. When he looked at her, there was so much passion of longing, so pathetic an appeal, that her heart smote her. Why should she be the one chosen to evoke a love such as this, she wondered; she, who was but Ynys, while Alan was a man whom all women might love, and had genius that made him as one set apart from his fellows, and was brow-lit by a starry fate?
And yet, in a sense she understood. They were so much at one, so like in all essentialmatters, and were in all ways comrades. It would have been impossible for each not to love the other. But, deeper than this, was the profound and intimate communion of the spirit. In some beautiful, strange way, she knew she was the flame to his fire. At that flame he lit the torch of which Daniel Darc and others had spoken. She did not see why or wherein it was so, but she believed, and indeed at last realized the exquisite actuality.
In deep love, there is no height nor depth between two hearts, no height nor depth, no length nor breadth. There is simply love.
The birds of Angus Ogue are like the wild-doves of the forest: when they nest in the heart they are as one. And her life, and Alan's, were not these one?
Nevertheless, Ynys was disappointed as the day went on, and her lover did not seem able to rouse himself from his strange despondency.
Doubtless this was due largely to what was pending. That afternoon he was to have his long anticipated interview with the Marquise,and would perhaps learn what might affect his whole life. On the other hand, each believed that nothing would be revealed which was not of the past solely.
Idly, Ynys began to question her companion about the previous night. What had he done, since he had not slept; had he read, or dreamed at the window, or gone out, as had once been his wont on summer nights, to walk in the cypress alley or along the grassy dunes? Had he heard a nightingale singing in the moonlight? Had he noticed the prolonged screaming of the peacocks—unusually prolonged, now that she thought of it, Ynys added.
"I wonder, dear, if you would love me whatever happened—whatever I was, or did?"
It was an inconsequent question. She looked up at him, half perturbed, half pleased.
"Yes, Alan."
"But do you mean what you say, knowing that you are not only using a phrase?"
"I have no gift of expression, dearest. Words come to me without their bloom andtheir fragrance, I often think. But ... Alan,I love you."
"That is sweetest music for me, Ynys, my fawn. All words from you have both bloom and fragrance, though you may not know it, shy flower. But tell me again, do you mean what you say,absolutely?"
"Absolutely. In every way, in all things, at all times. Dear, how couldany thingcome between us? It ispossible, of course, that circumstances might separate us. But nothing could really come between us. My heart is yours."
"What about Andrik de Morvan?"
"Ah, you are not in earnest, Alan!"
"Yes; I am more than half in earnest, Ynys, darling. Tell me!"
"You cannot possibly believe that I care, that I could care, for Andrik as I care for you, Alan."
"Why not?"
"Why not? Oh, have you so little belief, then, in women—in me? Alan, do you not know that what is perhaps possible for a man, though I cannot conceive it, isimpossiblefor a woman. That is the poorest sophistry whichsays a woman may love two men at the same time. That is, if by love is meant what you and I mean. Affection, the deepest affection, is one thing; the love of man and woman, aswemean it, is a thing apart!"
"You love Andrik?"
"Yes."
"Could you wed your life with his?"
"I could have done so ... but for you."
"Then, by your true heart, is there no possibility that he can in any way ever come between us?"
"None."
"Although he is nominally your betrothed, and believes in you as his future wife?"
"That is not my fault. I drifted into that conditional union, as you know. But after to-day he and every one shall know that I can wed no man but you. But why do you ask me these things, Alan?"
"I want to know. I will explain later. But tell me; could you be happy with Andrik? You say you love him?"
"I love him as a friend, as a comrade."
"As an intimately dear comrade?"
"Alan, do not let us misunderstand each other. There can only be one supreme comrade for a woman, and that is the man whom she loves supremely. Every other affection, the closest, the dearest, is as distinct from that as day from night."
"If by some malign chance you and Andrik married—say, in the event of my supposed death—would you still be as absolutely true to me as you are now?"
"What has the accident of marriage to do with truth between a man and a woman, Alan?"
"It involves intimacies that would be a desecration otherwise. Oh, Ynys, do you not understand?"
"It is a matter of the inner life. Men so rarely believe in the hidden loyalty of the heart. It is possible for a woman to fulfil a bond and yet not be a bondswoman. Outer circumstances have little to do with the inner life, with the real self."
"In a word, then, if you married Andrik you would remain absolutely mine, not only if I were dead, but if perchance the rumorwere untrue and I came back, though too late?"
"Yes."
"Absolutely?"
"Absolutely."
"And you profoundly know, Ynys, that in no conceivable circumstances can Andrik be to you what I am, or any thing for a moment approaching it?"
"I do know it."
"Although he were your husband?"
"Although he were my husband."
The worn lines that were in Alan's face were almost gone. Looking into his eyes Ynys saw that the strange look of pain which had alarmed her was no longer there. The dear eyes had brightened; a new hope seemed to have arisen in them.
"Do you believe me, Alan, dear?" she whispered.
"If I did not, it would kill me, Ynys."
And he spoke truth. The bitter sophistications of love play lightly with the possibilities of death. Men who talk of suicide are likely to be long-livers; lovers whose hearts are easilybroken can generally recover and astonish themselves by their heroic endurance. The human heart is like a wave of the sea; it can be lashed into storm, it can be calmed, it can become stagnant—but it is seldom absorbed from the ocean till in natural course the sun takes up its spirit in vapor. Yet, ever and again, there is one wave among a myriad which a spiral wind-eddy may suddenly strike. In a moment it is whirled this way and that; it is involved in a cataclysm of waters; and then cloud and sea meet, and what a moment before had been an ocean wave is become an idle skyey vapor.
Alan was of the few men of whom that wave is the symbol. To him, death could come at any time, if the wind-eddy of a certain unthinkable sorrow struck him at his heart.
In this sense, his life was in Ynys's hands as absolutely as though he were a caged bird. He knew it, and Ynys knew it.
There are a few men, a few women, like this. Perhaps it is well that these are so rare. Among the hills of the north, at least, theymay still be found; in remote mountain valleys and in lonely isles, where life and death are realized actualities and not the mere adumbrations of the pinions of that lonely fugitive, the human mind, along the endless precipices of Time.
Alan knew well that both he and Ynys were not so strong as each believed. Knowing this, he feared for both. And yet, there was but one woman in the world for him—Ynys; as for her, there was but one man—Alan. Without her, he could do nothing, achieve nothing. She was his flame, his inspiration, his strength, his light. Without her, he was afraid to live; with her, death was a beautiful dream. To her, Alan was not less. She lived in him and for him.
But we are wrought of marsh-fire as well as of stellar light. Now, as of old, the gods do not make of the fairest life a thornless rose. A single thorn may innocently convey poison; so that everywhere men and women go to and fro perilously, and not least those who move through the shadow and shine of an imperious passion.
For a time, thereafter, Alan and Ynys walked slowly onward, hand in hand, each brooding deep over the thoughts their words had stirred.
"Do you know what Yann says, Alan?" Ynys asked in a low voice, after both had stopped instinctively to listen to a thrush leisurely iterating his just learned love carol, where he swung on a greening spray of honeysuckle under a yellow-green lime. "Do you know what Yann says?... He says that you have a wave at your feet. What does that mean?"
"When did he tell you that, Ynys, mo-chree?"
"Ah, Alan, dear, how sweet it is to hear from your lips the dear Gaelic we both love so well! And does that not make you more than ever anxious to learn all that you are to hear this afternoon?"
"Yes ... but that, that Ian Macdonald said; what else did he say?"
"Nothing. He would say no more. I asked him in the Gaelic, and he repeated only, 'I see a wave at his feet.'"
"What Ian means by that I know well. It means I am going on a far journey."
"Oh, no, Alan, no!"
"He has the sight upon him, at times. Ian would not say that thing, did he not mean it. Tell me, my fawn, has he ever said any thing of this kind aboutyou?"
"Yes. Less than a month ago. I was with him one day on the dunes near the sea. Once, when he gave no answer to what I asked, I looked at him, and saw his eyes fixt. 'What do you see, Yann?' I asked.
"'I see great rocks, strange caverns. Sure, it is well I am knowing what they are. They are the Sea-caves of Rona.'
"There were no rocks visible from where we stood, so I knew that Ian was in one of his visionary moods. I waited, and then spoke again, whisperingly:
"'Tell me, Ian MacIain, what do you see?'
"'I see two whom I do not know. And they are in a strange place, they are. And on the man I see a shadow, and on the woman I see a light. But what that shadow is, I do not know; nor do I know what that light is. ButI am for thinking that it is of the Virgin Mary, for I see the dream that is in the woman's heart, and it is a fair wonderful dreamthat.'
"That is all Yann said, Alan. As I was about to speak, his face changed.
"'What is it, Ian?' I asked.
"At first he would answer nothing. Then he said: 'It is a dream. It means nothing. It was only because I was thinking of you and Alan MacAlasdair.'"
"Oh, Ynys!"—Alan interrupted with an eager cry—"that is a thing I have long striven to know; that which lies in the words 'Alan MacAlasdair.' My father, then, was named Alasdair! And was it Rona, you said, was the place of the Sea-caves? Rona ... that must be an island. The only Rona I know of is that near Skye. It may be the same. Now, indeed, I have a clew, lest I should learn nothing to-day. Did Ian say nothing more?"
"Nothing. I asked him if the man and woman he saw were you and I, but he would not speak. I am certain he was about to say yes, but refrained."
For a while they walked on in silence, each revolving many speculations aroused by the clew given by the words of "Yann the Dumb." Suddenly Ynys tightened her clasp of Alan's hand.
"What is it, dear?"
"Alan, some time ago you asked me abruptly what I knew about the forester, Judik Kerbastiou. Well, I see him in that beech-covert yonder, looking at us."
Alan started. Ynys noticed that for a moment he grew pale as foam. His lips parted, as though he were about to call to the woodlander: when Judik advanced, making at the same time a sign of silence.
The man had a wild look about him. Clearly, he had not slept since he and Alan had parted at midnight. His dusky eyes had a red light in them. His rough clothes were still damp; his face, too, was strangely white and dank.
Alan presumed that he came to say something concerning Annaik. He did not know what to do to prevent this, but while he was pondering, Judik spoke in a hoarse, tired voice:
"Let the Lady Ynys go back to the château at once. She is needed there."
"Why, what is wrong, Judik Kerbastiou?"
"Let her go back, I say. No time for words now. Be quick. I am not deceiving you. Listen ..." and with that he leaned toward Alan, and whispered in his ear.
Alan looked at him with startled amaze. Then, turning toward Ynys, he asked her to go back at once to the château.
"DEIREADH GACH COGAIDH, SITH" (THE END OF ALL WARFARE, PEACE)
Alan did not wait till Ynys was out of sight, before he demanded the reason of Judik's strange appearance and stranger summons.
"Why are you here again, Judik Kerbastiou? What is the meaning of this haunting of the forbidden home domain? And what did you mean by urging Mlle. Ynys to go back at once to the château?"
"Time enough later for your other questions, young sir. Meanwhile come along with me, and as quick as you can."
Without another word the woodlander turned and moved rapidly along a narrow path through the brushwood.
Alan saw it would be useless to ask further questions at the moment; moreover, he wasnow vaguely alarmed. What could all this mystery mean? Could an accident have happened to the Marquis Tristran? It was hardly likely, for he seldom ventured into the forest, unless when the weather had dried all the ways: for he had to be wheeled in his chair, and, as Alan knew, disliked to leave the gardens or the well-kept yew and cypress alleys near the château.
In a brief while, however, he heard voices. Judik turned, and waved to him to be wary. The forester bent forward, stared intently, and then beckoned to Alan to creep up alongside.
"Who is it? What is it, Judik?"
"Look!"
Alan disparted a bough of underwood which made an effectual screen. In the glade beyond were four figures.
One of these he recognized at once. It was the Marquis de Kerival. He was, as usual, seated in his wheeled chair. Behind him, some paces to the right, was Raif Kermorvan, the steward of Kerival. The other two men Alan had not seen before.
One of these strangers was a tall, handsome man, of about sixty. His close-cropped white hair, his dress, his whole mien, betrayed the military man. Evidently a colonel, Alan thought, or perhaps a general; at any rate an officer of high rank, and one to whom command and self-possession were alike habitual. Behind this gentleman, one of the most distinguished and even noble-looking men he had ever seen, and again some paces to the right, was a man, evidently a groom, and to all appearances an orderly in mufti.
The first glance revealed that a duel was imminent. The duellists, of course, were the military stranger and the Marquis de Kerival.
"Who is that man?" Alan whispered to Kerbastion. "Do you know?"
"I do not know his name. He is a soldier—a general. He came to Kerival to-day; an hour or more ago. I guided him through the wood, for he and his man had ridden into one of the winding alleys and had lost their way. I heard him ask for the Marquis de Kerival. I waited about in the shrubbery of the rose garden to see if ...if ... some one for whom I waited ... would come out. After a time, half an hour or less, this gentleman came forth, ushered by Raif Kermorvan, the steward. His man brought around the two horses again. They mounted, and rode slowly away. I joined them, and offered to show them a shorter route than that which they were taking. The General said they wished to find a glade known as Merlin's Rest. Then I knew what he came for, I knew what was going to happen." "What, Judik?"
"Hush! not so loud. They will hear us! I knew it was for a duel. It was here that Andrik de Morvan, the uncle of him whom you know, was killed by a man—I forget his name."
"Why did the man kill Andrik de Morvan?"
"Oh, who knows? Why does one kill any body? Because he was tired of enduring the Sieur Andrik longer; he bored him beyond words to tell, I have heard. Then, too, the Count, for he was a count, loved Andrik's wife."
Alan glanced at Judik. For all his rough wildness, he spoke on occasion like a man of breeding. Moreover, at no time was he subservient in his manner. Possibly, Alan thought, it was true what he had heard: that Judik Kerbastiou was by moral right Judik de Kerival.
While the onlookers were whispering, the four men in the glade had all slightly shifted their position. The Marquis, it was clear, had insisted upon this. The light had been in his eyes. Now the antagonists and their seconds were arranged aright. Kermorvan, the steward, was speaking slowly: directions as to the moment when to fire.
Alan knew it would be worse than useless to interfere. He could but hope that this was no more than an affair of honor of a kind not meant to have a fatal issue; a political quarrel, perhaps; a matter of insignificant social offence.
Before Raif Kermorvan—a short, black-haired, bull-necked man, with a pale face and protruding light blue eyes—had finished what he had to say, Alan noticed what had hitherto escaped him: that immediately beyond theglade, and under a huge sycamore, already in full leaf, stood the Kerival carriage. Alain, the coachman, sat on the box, and held the two black horses in rein. Standing by the side of the carriage was Georges de Rohan, the doctor of Kerloek, and a personal friend of the Marquis Tristran.
Suddenly Kermorvan raised his voice.
"M. le Général, are you ready?"
"I am ready," answered a low, clear voice.
"M. le Marquis, are you ready?"
Tristran de Kerival did not answer, but assented by a slight nod.
"Then raise your weapons, and fire the moment I say 'thrice.'"
Both men raised their pistols.
"You have the advantage of me, sir," said the Marquis coldly, in a voice as audible to Alan and Judik as to the others. "I present a good aim to you here. Nevertheless, I warn you once more that you will not escape me ... this time."
The General smiled; scornfully, Alan thought. Again, when suddenly he lowered his pistol and spoke, Alan fancied he detectedif not a foreign accent, at least a foreign intonation.
"Once more, Tristran de Kerival, I tell you that this duel is a crime; a crime against me, a crime against Mme. la Marquise, a crime against your daughters, and a crime against...."
"That will do, General. I am ready. Are you?"
Without further word the stranger slowly drew himself together. He raised his arm, while his opponent did the same.
"Once! Twice! Thrice!" There was a crack like that of a cattle-whip. Simultaneously some splinters of wood were blown from the left side of the wheeled chair.
The Marquis Tristran smiled. He had reserved his fire. He could aim now with fatal effect
"It is murder!" muttered Alan, horrified; but at that moment the Marquis spoke. Alan leaned forward, intent to hear.
"At last!" That was all. But in the words was a concentrated longing for revenge, the utterance of a vivid hate.
Tristran de Kerival slowly and with methodical malignity took aim. There was a flash, the same whip-like crack.
For a moment it seemed as though the ball had missed its mark. Then, suddenly, there was a bubbling of red froth at the mouth of the stranger. Still, he stood erect.
Alan looked at the Marquis de Kerival. He was leaning back, deathly white, but with the bitter, suppressed smile which every one at the château knew and hated.
All at once the General swayed, lunged forward, and fell prone.
Dr. de Rohan ran out from the sycamore, and knelt beside him. After a few seconds he looked up.
He did not speak, but every one knew what his eyes said. To make it unmistakable, he drew out his handkerchief and put it over the face of the dead man.
Alan was about to advance when Judik Kerbastiou plucked him by the sleeve.
"Hst! M'sieur Alan! There is Mamzelle Ynys returning! She will be here in another minute. She must not see what is there."
"You are right, Judik. I thank you."
With that he turned and moved swiftly down the leaf-hid path which would enable him to intercept Ynys.
"What is it, Alan?" she asked, with wondering eyes, the moment he was at her side. "What is it? Why are you so pale?"
"It is because of a duel that has been fought here. You must go back at once, dear. There are reasons why you...."
"Is my father one of the combatants? I know he is out of the château. Tell me quick! Is he wounded? Is he dead?"
"No, no, darling heart! He is unhurt. But I can tell you nothing more just now. Later ... later. But why did you return here?"
"I came with a message from my mother. She is in sore trouble, I fear. I found her, on her couch in the Blue Salon, with tears streaming down her face and sobs choking her."
"And she wants me ... now?"
"Yes. She told me to look for you, and bring you to her at once."
"Then go straightway back, dear, and tellher that I shall be with her immediately. Yes, go—go—at once."
But by the time Ynys had moved into the alley which led her to the château, and Alan had returned to the spot where he had left Judik, rapid changes had occurred.
The wheeled chair had gone. Alan could see it nearing the South Yews; with the Marquis Tristran in it, leaning backward and with head erect. At its side walked Raif Kermorvan. He seemed to be whispering to the Seigneur. The carriage had disappeared; with it Georges de Rohan, the soldier orderly, and, presumably, the dead man.
Alan stood hesitant, uncertain whether to go first to the Marquise, or to follow the man whom he regarded now with an aversion infinitely deeper than he had ever done hitherto; with whom, he felt, he never wished to speak again, for he was a murderer, if ever man was, and, from Alan's standpoint, a coward as well. Tristran de Kerival was the deadliest shot in all the country-side, and he must have known that, when he challenged his victim, he gave him his death sentence.
It did not occur to Alan that possibly the survivor was the man challenged. Instinctively he knew that this was not so.
Judik suddenly touched his arm.
"Here," he said; "this is the name of the dead man. I got the servant to write it down for me."
Alan took the slip of paper. On it was: "M. le Général Carmichael."