The lawn before me lay in deep shadow; but just as the first rays of the moon began to illuminate it, I thought I perceived a figure, which, coming from the other side, was slowly approaching Constance's window. In this there was nothing to excite suspicion, for it might be one of the laborers; but it is the duty of a faithful squire to make sure in any case; so without a moment's hesitation I started across the lawn to meet the figure. Unluckily I stepped upon a dry twig and it snapped. The figure stopped instantly, and began to retreat with swift, stealthy steps. He had but little start of me, but the thick coppice which closed in the lawn on that side, and was the limit of the park, was so near that he reached it a few moments before me. I distinctly heard some one pushing through the branches, but with my utmost exertions I could not reach him. I began to think that my ear had led me in a wrong direction, when suddenly a loud crashing and clattering close at hand proved that I was on the right track. The man was evidently clambering over the rotten paling which fenced in the park on this side. Now I knew he could not escape me. On the other side lay a wide open space, and I had never yet met the man whom I could not overtake in a fair race. But at the instant that I reached the paling, I heard a horse's feet, and looking up saw a rider galloping across the open in the clear moonlight. The horse was evidently one of great power and speed. At each stride he cleared such a stretch of ground, that in less than half a minute horse and rider were lost to sight; for a brief space I still heard the sound of the hoofs, and then that also ceased. The whole adventure passed in so little time, that I might have fancied I had dreamed it all, but for the evidence of my heart beating violently with excitement and the exertion of the chase, and the smarting of my hands, which were torn by the thorns and briers. Who could the audacious intruder be? Certainly not an ordinary thief; doubtless some one who had been attracted by the light from Constance's window, and not to-night for the first time; it was plain that he had often followed that path in the dark. That it was a favored lover, I did not for a moment suppose. Such a surmise would have seemed to me an outrage, and upon one, too, whose dreamy eyes, whose melancholy song, and whose tears rather told of an unhappy than of a requited attachment. But they surely told of love. Not that I was presumptuous enough to indulge in any hope, or even wish; how could I dare to lift my eyes to her? I could only live and die for her, and perhaps another time break the neck of the rash mortal who had dared under cover of the night to approach her sanctuary. This idea somewhat solaced my dejection, but my former happiness had departed never to return. It was with a heavy sense of anxiety and apprehension that I re-entered the room where the gentlemen were still at the card-table.