cool air was grateful to his head, but he gave no thought to it. Just
then, from the other way of the road, he heard a light, elastic step and
saw a figure that, even in the darkness, he could not fail to know.

"Sophia!" There was fear in his voice.

"Have you seen Winifred?" she cried.

"Winifred? No," he called, back.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, breathless. She never noticed that
he had called her by name. The abruptness of her own question was
evidently atoned for by some necessity the nature of which he had not
yet entirely grasped. Yet a knowledge, gleaned too late from all the
occurrences of the evening, leaped up within him to anticipate her
tidings.

"Winifred has gone out since dark. Whether she is alone or not I don't
know, but she has gone to the mountain. She means to climb it to-night
because they have told her that--that----"

His lady-love stopped. Voice and language seemed alike to fail her when
she essayed to tell him, and he, awed at the thought of hearing such
sacred words from her lips, awed to think that the sword of this
fanaticism had come so near as to strike the pure young girl who was so
dear to them both, took her pause as if it had told him everything.

"How do you know?" His words were brief and stern.

She was walking on, he thought merely from excitement. As he kept up