disappearance, he went out quickly. The entrance door stood wide open; the dim light flickered on an empty hall and stairway; the sky was black with clouds, and never a star; the wind moaned about the house; and across the meadow came the doleful howl of old Hagar's watch-dog. But Madeline was not to be found. Always, in the days to come, he remembered her face as it had looked on him that night. Often in dreams he would start and cry out, haunted by the sound of her scornful voice, the spectre of her threatening hand. CHAPTER IV. THE DIE IS CAST. Lucian Davlin paced the platform of the Bellair depot, in a very unpleasant frame of mind. His companion,—half servant, half confederate, wholly and entirely a rascal,—discerning his mood and, as ever, adapting himself to it, had withdrawn to a respectful distance. Only the shine of his cigar, glowing through the darkness, betokened his proximity, or the fact that the dark platform was not in the sole possession of the sullen man who paced its brief length, and questioned the Fate in which he trusted, and which, for once, had played him a sorry trick. [45] [45] "Gad! to be baffled like this!"—page 46. [46] [46] He had been deceived by a mere school-girl. She had not even deigned him a farewell word. He had lost a fair prize. "Gad!" he muttered, biting viciously at his cigar, "to be baffled like this; to lose that little beauty; to be foiled like a moon-struck idiot and never know how or why! I can't write her, with that cursed old step-father to interfere. I can't return again very soon. And she is such a little beauty!" He paused at the end of the darkened platform, and looked down the track; in the direction of the grove where they had met, and of Madeline's home. It was almost time for the train. At
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