Seth had gone up to his room in a state of wretchedness which, seeming insupportable at the outset, had grown steadily worse upon reflection. He said to himself that he had never before in his whole life been so humiliated and unhappy, and then smiled with pitying contempt for the inadequacy of such a statement of the case. One’s career must have been titanic in its tragic experiences to warrant such a comparison. “I have never known before what suffering was,” he thought, as he paced up and down his little room, scourging himself with the lash of bitter reflections.

To try to sleep did not enter his head. He sat for a long time on the side of the bed, seeking to evolve something like order from the chaos of his wits, but he could not think. Had he tried to write, to discuss the thing in a letter, the simple familiar operation of the pen might have led him out of the cul de sac. As it was, whichever turn his mind sought to take, there rose an impassable barrier of shame, or rage or self-recrimination. In whatever light he tried to view the situation, it was all pain. He had been curtly, cruelly thrown off by his brother—the man to whom he owed everything—and he had had to listen to the most cutting, insulting language from this brother before they parted. Then, as he clenched his fists and fumed with impotent anger at the recollection of this language, there would come to divert this wrath, and turn it back upon himself, the facts that he had interposed his own boyish vanity and conceit to balk this brother’s purposes, and had been caught trembling on the very brink of making love to this brother’s wife. Did he not richly merit Albert’s scorn? He could remember—should he ever forget?—the exact words of Albert’s contemptuous characterization: “A conceited, presumptuous, offensive fool.” Did he not deserve them all? He owed this brother everything: the honest boy insisted upon saying this to himself over and over again, as the basis of all argument on the subject; the opportunity came for him to repay something of this debt. How had he improved it? By setting himself up to oppose this brother in the chief object of his life, and, as if this were not enough, by yielding weakly to the temptation to rob him of his domestic honor as well! “I must be a villain as well as a fool, must I!” the youngster growled between his set teeth, as he threw himself from the bed, and began the gloomy pacing up and down again.

He had not lighted his lamp. The soft half-darkness of the starlight, sufficing barely to render objects visible in the room, suited his mood. He heard the sound of wheels now on the gravel below. Looking out, he could see that the grays were being driven out; as they turned the corner of the house, the full moonlight fell upon them and the carriage, and Seth saw distinctly that it was his brother who was driving, and that he was wrapped as for an all-night ride.

“He won’t even stay under the same roof with me!” he said half-aloud, with a fresh bitterness of self-accusation—and then the torment of reproaching voices began in his breast again.

As he turned from the window he heard a low rapping at his door; a minute later, he heard Isabel’s voice, almost a whisper:

“Seth! Don’t open the door, but tell me, who was it that went out with the carriage just now? I heard it, but from my window I could see nothing. Was it he?”

Seth answered, as calmly as he could: “Yes, I am sure of it. I recognized him.” He stood close to the door, and the thought that only the thin pine panels divided him from her was uppermost in his mind.

There was a little pause. Once his hand involuntarily moved toward the latch, but he drew it back. Then she spoke again:

“You had a terrible quarrel, didn’t you, and all for me! I heard your answer, Seth, way up here. How nobly you spoke! It went straight to my heart, to hear his brutality rebuked in that manly way. I shan’t forget it.”

There was a moment’s silence; then she whispered with a lingering softness, “Good night!” and he heard the faint rustling of her garments down the hall.

Brief as the interruption was, it had changed the whole spirit of his thoughts. The vindictive accusing demons had vanished, and left no more than a numbing sense of past torture in his breast. The anguish of self-condemnation, the crushing burden of self-humiliation, had passed away. The moonlight, as it spread over the slope toward Thessaly village, seemed to bring healing in its peaceful radiance. His own provocation grew mountain high; his brother’s justification for his insults and barbarity diminished. “I was doing only my duty in opposing him,” he said confidently, and there was no voice of dissent now. “Still more was I right in defending poor Isabel from his unmanly imputations. If a man is incapable of appreciating such a wife——.”

He did not follow out his thought, but surrendered himself instead to calling up, and enjoying in detail, the sweet scene which Albert’s coming had so rudely broken into. How delicious it all was, as fancy now limned its outlines—yet not all the dainty graces of imagination and memory could reproduce in its full charm the original. He could think, and think, until the whole room seemed instinct with her presence, but how poor a counterfeit it all was, lacking the perfume of her hair and laces, the deep, languorous glow of her eyes, the thrilling melody of her low voice. The tender, caressing prolongation of syllables in that whispered “good night” made soft soul-music still in his ears. The insane thought—he did not dare ask himself if it were also a hope—that she might come again, took possession of him, and he stood for a long time close by the door, listening, waiting.

It was while Seth stood thus, seeing only with the eyes of the mind, that Milton stole past on the grass below, with the black mare, on his mission of murder. Had the young man been at the window instead, much that followed might have been different.

Seth stood at the door for what seemed to him a long time, until gradually the futility of the action became apparent to him. “Of course she would not come!” he said, and resumed his pacing once more.

The Faust-like vision began to dance before his eyes again, but with a witchery now which was uncanny. The calm of waiting had brought him enough strength of control to feel the presence of the cloven hoof in it all. The temptation was more urgent, strenuous than ever, but he was conscious of a deeper, more dogged spirit of resistance within him than ever, as well. There was no renewal of the savage, chaotic war of emotions under which he had suffered at the outset, groaning in the self-infliction of purposeless pain. This was a definite, almost scientific, struggle between two distinct forces, and though they fought their battle with all manner of sophistical weapons, and employed feints, pretended retreats and false advances in highest strategical form, he was never deceived for a moment as to which was the bad and which the good.

The issue forced itself upon him, finally, with a demand for decision which was imperative. He could stay no longer in his room. There was neither sleep nor rest of any kind there for him.

He went to the door, and opened it. Through the blackness he could see a faint vertical line of light at the front end of the low hall, as of a lamp burning, and a door left ajar. The yellow ray gleamed as he looked at it, and seemed to wave itself in fascinating motions of enticement. He stood for a moment undecided, all his impulses strongly swaying towards the temptation, all his resisting reasons growing weaker in their obstruction, and some even turning coward, and whispering, as they laid down their arms, “After all, youth has its rights.” Then he squared his shoulders, with the old gesture of resolution, and walked steadily away from the line of light, down the stairs, and out of the door, bareheaded under the stars.

He had walked for a long, long time, before he became conscious that he had left his hat behind. The night air was exceptionally mild for the season, but it grew cool enough to bring this fact to his notice. As he put his hand to his head, and stopped short at the discovery, his whole mind seemed to clarify itself. He had been walking aimlessly, almost unconsciously—it must have been for much more than an hour. In a vague way, he knew where his steps had led him. He had walked through the orchard to his mother’s grave, and stood for some time by the brier-clad wall and fence which surrounded it, thinking of his boyhood, and of her. Then he had struck across through Sir Thomas’s pasture, to the main road; thence by the way of the school-house, and skirting the hill, to the Burfield road, at the farthermost end of the line of poplars.

As he stopped here now collecting his thoughts, awakening himself as it were, the sound of chorussinging reached him, faint at first, then growing more distinct. A wagon-load of young people were returning from Leander Crump’s husking, enjoying themselves in the fair moonlight. From the sounds, they must have been about in front of the Fairchild homestead, and they were coming rapidly toward Seth. If he remained in the road, they must pass and recognize him.

There was a division line of thorn hedge, long since grown into tall young trees, coming to the road here, and a path beside it leading to a rude stile in the turnpike fence. This path went straight to Mrs. Warren’s house, as Seth had known from boyhood, but he gave this no thought as he stepped over the stile, and moved along in the shadow of the thorns. He walked a score of yards or so, and then stepped closer into the obscurity of the hedge, to wait till the hay-wagon and its caroling crew had passed by on the road outside. He was feeling very cold now, and tired to boot, and said to himself that as soon as the road was clear he would go home and go to bed.

To his surprise the singing came to an abrupt halt, just as the wagon approached the end of the hedge.

There was a chorus of merry “whoas!” as the horses drew up, and through the clear air Seth could hear a confused babel of voices, all jovially discussing something. One male voice, louder than the rest, called out:

“You’d better let me come along with you!”

There was some giggling audible, out of which rose a clear, fresh girlish voice which Seth knew:

“No, thanks! I can cut across by this path in less than no time. I’m not afraid. The tramps are all abed and asleep by this time, like other honest people.”

With more laughter, and a salvo of “good nights!” the wagon started off again, and Annie Fairchild, singing lightly to herself the refrain of the chorus, and holding her face up to catch the full radiance of the moonlight, came walking briskly down the path.

Despite her valiant confidence the young woman gave a visible start of alarm as Seth stepped out from the shadows to speak to her. She threw herself forward as if to run, then looked again, stopped, and then gave a little tremulous laugh, and cried:

“Why, Seth! is that you. Mercy! How you frightened me!”

He could think of nothing better than a feeble parody of her words: “Yes, it is time all honest people were abed and asleep.”

He said this with a half-smile, but the girl’s face grew more serious still as she looked at her cousin. She spoke eagerly:—

“Why, what’s the matter with you to-night? Where is your hat? You look as white as a ghost! Oh—have you come from our house? Is it something about grandmother?”

“No, it’s nothing about her. I haven’t been nearer your place than this. I only stepped in here so as to avoid the wagon. I didn’t want them to see me like this.”

“But why should you be like this? Now, Seth, I know something has happened. What is it? Am I wanted? Can I do anything?”

“Let me walk with you to your house,” he said, and they turned toget............