XIV. ST. LUC'S REVENGE




CHAPTER I


IN THE DEEP WOODS

A light wind sang through the foliage, turned to varying and vivid
hues now by the touch of autumn, and it had an edge of cold that made
Robert Lennox shiver a little, despite a hardy life in wilderness and
open. But it was only a passing feeling. A moment or two later he
forgot it, and, turning his eyes to the west, watched the vast
terraces of blazing color piled one above another by the sinking sun.

Often as he had seen it the wonderful late glow over the mighty forest
never failed to stir him, and to make his pulse beat a little faster.
His sensitive mind, akin in quality to that of a poet, responded with
eagerness and joy to the beauty and majesty of nature. Forgetting
danger and the great task they had set for themselves, he watched the
banks of color, red and pink, salmon and blue, purple and yellow,
shift and change, while in the very heart of the vast panorama the
huge, red orb, too strong for human sight, glittered and flamed.

The air, instinct with life, intoxicated him and he became rapt as in
a vision. People whom he had met in his few but eventful years passed
before him again in all the seeming of reality, and then his spirit