"Why, I beg your pardon. Was it not curious? I thought I saw there behind your man"--she hesitated, but he must be a servant, she argued--"the shadow of great, white wings. It was but the light on the drapery. What a turn it gave me." And she smiled again. With her came a tall, handsome, young naval officer. Hearing his lady refer to the servant, he hardly looked at him, but held his gilded cap carelessly toward him, and the stranger placed it carefully on the rack. Last came the rector, a man of forty, and well-clothed. He started to pass the stranger, stopped, and looked at him inquiringly. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I beg your pardon,--I think I have met you?" The stranger made no answer, and the hostess nervously hurried the guests on. But the rector lingered and looked perplexed. "Surely, I know you. I have met you somewhere," he said, putting his hand vaguely to his head. "You--you remember me, do you not?" The stranger quietly swept his cloak aside, and to the hostess' unspeakable relief passed out of the door. "I never knew you," he said in low tones as he went. The lady murmured some vain excuse about intruders, but the rector stood with annoyance written on his face. "I beg a thousand pardons," he said to the hostess absently. "It is a great pleasure to be here,--somehow I thought I knew that man. I am sure I knew him once." The stranger had passed down the steps, and as he passed, the nurse, lingering at the top of the staircase, flew down after him, caught his cloak, trembled, hesitated, and then kneeled in the dust. He touched her lightly with his hand and said: "Go, and sin no more!" With a glad cry the maid left the house, with its open door, and turned north, running. The stranger turned eastward into the night. As they parted a long, low howl rose tremulously and reverberated through the night. The colonel's wife within shuddered. "The bloodhounds!" she said. The rector answered carelessly: "Another one of those convicts escaped, I suppose. Really, they need severer measures." Then he stopped. He was trying to remember that stranger's name. The judge's wife looked about for the draft and arranged her shawl. The girl glanced at the white drapery in the hall, but the young officer was bending over her and the fires of life burned in her veins. Howl after howl rose in the night, swelled, and died away. The stranger strode rapidly along the highway and out into the deep forest. There he paused and stood waiting, tall and still. A mile up the road behind a man was running, tall and powerful and black, with crime-stained face and convicts' stripes upon him, and shackles on his legs. He ran and jumped, in little, short steps, and his chains rang. He fell and rose again, while the howl of the hounds rang louder behind him.