He strode hastily away, with the wild creatures of the woods scattering right and left at his heavy tread, and, making straight for the gabled house, he began for the first time now to think upon its occupant. Once or twice a pang shot through his breast as he thought of the gaily-dressed young officer made a welcome guest at the house whose door he was forbidden to enter; and he stopped short, with his teeth gritting together, and his brow knit, his mind agitated by the thoughts of what might be. It was very still, and the soft balmy summer night-air bore the sounds from far away, as with a faint, piercing, shrill cry the bats wheeled around the tree beneath whose dark shadow he stood; the night-hawk chased the moths in busy circle, and a great white-breasted owl floated softly by, turned and flew beneath the tree, but on seeing Gil uttered a wild and thrilling shriek as it fled away, a sound in keeping with the words of Gil Carr, as he walked hastily on once more, exclaiming-- "I should slay him if he did." The object of his thoughts was Sir Mark Leslie, then lying on a couch by the open window of his room, with the sweet scents of the garden floating in, and the soft, moist, warm night-air playing pleasantly upon his forehead. He, too, had his thoughts fixed upon Mace, and, perhaps by a subtle influence, they were drawn, too, towards him whom he had seen as her companion in the boat, the man who had played surgeon, and in whose eyes he had seemed to read no friendly feeling towards himself. It must have been ten o'clock when Gil came in sight of the gables standing up against the soft, clear summer sky. The occupants of the neighbouring cottages were asleep, and with the exception of the beetle's drone, and the baying of some bugle-mouthed beagle, all was so silent that the ripple and rush of the water in the stone channel seemed to rise and fall with almost painful force. There was a broad sloping bank some thirty or forty yards from the front of the house, and, taking off his hat, Gil softly walked along by it for a little distance, stooping here and there to thrust his hand in among the long dew-wet grass, and place something in his hat. So occupied was he with his proceedings that he did not notice a figure seated beneath a tree nor heed the faint odour of tobacco which was nearly overpowered in the soft, sweet woodland scents that floated by. Neither did he notice that a window was open in one of the gables, and that the founder was seated there, gazing out upon the summer sky. For, lover-like, Gil Carr was just then very blind, perhaps because the thoughts of Mace Cobbe filled his breast to the exclusion of everything else. Turning then to his task, he walked back to the sloping bank, and softly placed the four glow-worms he had brought diamond-wise upon the grass, where the little creatures glimmered in the darkness like the signal-lights of a ship at sea.