two corners of the house facing the road, mounting high upon the
tall red chimneys at the ends. There were flower-beds below the
terrace, and off to the right there was an old-fashioned garden.
The stables were at the foot of the hill some distance to the rear
of the house.

The village of Windomville lay below, hugging the river, a relic of
the days when steamboats plied up and down the stream and railways
were remote, a sleepy, insignificant, intensely rural hamlet of
less than six hundred inhabitants. Its one claim to distinction was
the venerable but still active ferry that laboured back and forth
across the river. Of secondary importance was the ancient dock,
once upon a time the stopping place of steamboats, but now a rotten,
rickety obstruction upon which the downstream drift lodged in an
unsightly mass.

In the solid red-brick house among the oaks Alix the Third had spent
her childhood days. She was taken to England when she was eight
by her haunted grandfather, not only to receive the bringing-up of
an English child, but because David Windom's courage was breaking
down. As she grew older, the resemblance to Edward Crown became
more and more startling. She had his dark, smiling eyes; his wavy
brown hair; her very manner of speech was like his. To David Windom,
she was the re-incarnation of the youth he had slain. Out of her
eyes seemed to look the soul of Edward Crown. He could not stand it.
She became an obsession, a curious source of fascination. He could
not bear her out of his sight, and yet when she was with him, smiling
up into his eyes,--he was deathly afraid of her. There were times
when he was almost overcome by the impulse to drop to his knees
and plead for forgiveness as he looked into the clear, friendly,