if to give it warmth. He could feel her shivering, and yet
something told him that what he sensed in the darkness was not
caused by chill alone. Several times her fingers closed
shudderingly about his.

They had not walked more than a couple of hundred yards when a
turn brought them out of the forest trail, and the blackness ahead
was broken by a solitary light, a dimly lighted window in a pit of
gloom.

"Marja is not expecting us to-night," apologized the girl
nervously. "That is Adare House."

The loneliness of the spot, its apparent emptiness of life, the
silence save for the snuffling and whining of the unseen beasts
about them, stirred Philip with a curious sensation of awe. He had
at least expected light and life at Adare House. Here were only
the mystery of darkness and a deathlike quiet. Even the one light
seemed turned low. As they advanced toward it a great shadow grew
out of the gloom; and then, all at once, it seemed as if a curtain
of the forest had been drawn aside, and away beyond the looming
shadow Philip saw the glow of a camp-fire. From that distant fire
there came the challenging howl of a dog, and instantly it was
taken up by a score of fierce tongues about them. As Josephine's
voice rose to quell the disturbance the light in the window grew
suddenly brighter, and then a door opened and in it stood the
figures of a man and woman. The man was standing behind the woman,
looking over her shoulder, and for one moment Philip caught the
flash of the lamp-glow on the barrel of a rifle.