He tramped to and fro in the room for a moment and then broke out nervously, "All last night I dreamt such an ugly dream. I dreamt it three times, and, O God! what an ugly dream it was! It was a bad night, and I was walking in the dark, and stumbling first into bogs and then in cart ruts, when all of a sudden a man's hand seized me unawares. I could not see the man, and we struggled long in the darkness, and it seemed as if he would master me. He gripped me by the waist, and I held him by the shoulders. We reeled and fell together, and when I would have risen his knee was on my chest. But a great flood of strength seemed to come to me and I threw him off, and rose to my feet and closed with him again, and at last I was over him, covering him, with his back across my thigh and my hand set hard in his throat. And all this time I heard his loud breathing in the darkness, but never once the sound of his voice. Then instantly, as if by a flash of lightning, I saw the face that was close to mine, and--God Almighty! it was my own face--my own--and it was black already from the pressure of my stiff fingers at the throat." He trembled as he spoke, and sat again and shivered, and a cold chill ran down his back. "Mona," he said, half in a sob, "do you believe in omens?" She did not reply. Her breast heaved visibly, and she could not speak. "Tush!" he said, in another voice, "omens!" and he laughed bitterly, and rose again and picked up his hat, and then said, in a quieter way, "Only, as I say, they're taking the wrong way with me, Mona." He had opened the door, and she had turned her swimming eyes toward him. "It was bad enough to make himself a stranger to me, but why did he want to make you a stranger, too? Stranger, stranger!" He echoed the word in a mocking accent, and threw back his head. "Dan," said Mona, in a low, passionate tone, and the blinding tears rained down her cheeks, "nothing and nobody can make us strangers, you and me--not my father, or your dear father, or Ewan, or"--she dropped her voice to a deep whisper--"or any misfortune or any disgrace." "Mona!" he cried, and took a step toward her, and stretched out one arm with a yearning gesture. But at the next moment he had swung about, and was going out at the door. At sight of all that tenderness and loyalty in Mona's face his conscience smote him as it had never smitten him before. "Ewan was right, Mona. He is the noblest man on God's earth, and I am the foulest beast on it." He was pulling the door behind him when he encountered Jarvis Kerruish in the hall. That gentleman had just come into the house, and was passing through the hall in hat and cloak. He looked appalled at seeing Dan there, and stepped aside to let him go by; but Dan did not so much as recognize his presence by lifting his head as he strode out at the porch.