of this night that might have given the whole adventure a
different ending.

There is a point near the village where a road enters our private
one; skirts the border of the mountain, and, making a great turn,
enters the village from the south. At this division of the road
I heard distinctly a sound in the wood.

It was not a sound to incite inquiry. It was the sound of some
considerable animal moving in the leaves, a few steps beyond the
road. It did not impress me at the time; estrays were constantly
at large in our forests in summer, and not infrequently a roaming
buck from the near preserves. There was also here in addition to
the other roads, an abandoned winter wood-road that ran westward
across the island to a small farming settlement. Doubtless
I took a slighter notice of the sound because estrays from the
farmers' fields usually trespassed on us from this road.

At any rate I went on. I fear that I was very much engrossed
with the memory of Madame Barras. Not wholly with the feminine
lure of her, although as I have written she was the perfection of
that lure. One passed women, at all milestones, on the way to
age, and kept before them one's sound estimates of life, but
before this woman one lost one's head, as though Nature, evaded
heretofore, would not be denied. But the weird fortune that had
attended her was in my mind.

Married to Senor Barras out of the door of a convent, carried to
Rio de Janeiro to an unbearable life, escaping with a remnant of
her inheritance in English bank-notes, she arrives here to visit