eyes. So too much light sent the maid by the spot unenlightened.

Leonard drew aside lest the beam swing next into his window. But the
precaution was wasted; the glare followed Minnie.

Isabel also followed, slowly, a few paces, and then moved obliquely into
the roadway and toward the window. Only for a moment the ray swept near
her unseen observer, and, lighting up the rain-packed sand close before
herself, revealed a line of footprints slanting toward her from
Leonard's own gate.

As the cottage door shut Minnie in, Isabel, reassured by the brightness
of the Byingtons' lower windows, stopped for a furtive instant, and
holding in her hand the fellow of the slipper so lately in Ruth's
fingers, exactly fitted it to one of these footprints. Then, with the
lantern on her farther side, and every vein surging with fright and
shame, she made haste toward the open gateway of the Winslow house.

A short space from it she recoiled with a gesture of dismay and
self-repression, and her light shone full upon a man. He stepped from
the garden, his form tensely lifted, his face aflame with anger.

But her small figure straightened also, and swiftly muffling the lantern
in a fold of her skirt, she exclaimed, audibly only to him, though in
words clear-cut as musical notes, "Oh, Arthur Winslow, has it come to
this?"

She arrested his resentful answer by the uplift of a hand, which left
the lantern again uncovered. "Inside! In the house!" she softly cried,
starting on. "Not here! Look!--those upper windows!--we're in full view