Once at the open window, she leaned forth and looked to the east and the west. The hush of the evening had fallen; the light was faint; above the last rose flush a great star palely shone. All was quiet, deserted; nothing stirring on the leaf-carpeted slope; no sound save the distant singing of the slaves. The river lay bare from shore to shore, save where the Westover landing stretched raggedly into the flood. To its piles small boats were tied, but there seemed to be no boatmen; wharf and river appeared as barren of movement and life as did the long expanse of dusky lawn. “I will not sleep in this house to-night,” said Audrey to herself. “If I can reach those boats unseen, I will go alone down the river. That will be well. I am not wanted here.” When she arrived at the foot of the narrow stair, she slipped through the door into a world all dusk and quiet, where was none to observe her, none to stay her. Crouching by the wall she crept to the front of the house, stole around the stone steps where, that morning, she had sat in the sunshine, and came to the parlor windows. Close beneath one was a block of stone. After a moment’s hesitation she stood upon this, and, pressing her face against the window pane, looked her last upon the room she had so lately left. A low fire upon the hearth, darkly illumined it: he sat by the table, with his arms outstretched and his head bowed upon them. Audrey dropped from the stone into the ever growing shadows, crossed the lawn, slipped below the bank, and took her way along the river edge to the long landing. When she was half way down its length, she saw that there was a canoe which she had not observed and that it held one man, who sat with his back to the shore. With a quick breath of dismay she stood still, then setting her lips went on; for the more she thought of having to see those two again, Evelyn and the master of Fair View, the stronger grew her determination to commence her backward journey alone and at once. She had almost reached the end of the wharf when the man in the boat stood up and faced her. It was Hugon. The dusk was not so great but that the two, the hunter and his quarry, could see each other plainly. The latter turned with the sob of a stricken deer, but the impulse to flight lasted not. Where might she go? Run blindly, north or east or west, through the fields of Westover? That would shortly lead to cowering in some wood or swamp while the feet of the searchers came momently nearer. Return to the house, stand at bay once more? With all her strength of soul she put this course from her. The quick strife in her mind ended in her moving slowly, as though drawn by an invisible hand, to the edge of the wharf, above Hugon and his canoe. She did not wonder to see him there. Every word that Haward had spoken in the Westover parlor was burned upon her brain, and he had said that he had come up river with an Indian. This was the Indian, and to hunt her down those two had joined forces.