"It is unnecessary," quickly interrupted Milt. "Those things I _do_ understand are all-sufficient for me. You wanted me away from here, and you succeeded in getting me to go--you preferred the Squire's money to my poverty, and you are on the eve of getting his money, too. Perhaps you are in league with those rascals who may have meant only to frighten me, and cause me to run away, like a cowardly cur. They might not have harmed me--I doubt now if they intended to. "It is not too late, though, to thwart your plans and his," continued the speaker with increasing anger. "You are not yet married to that brute, and, by heaven! you shall not be! I swear it! I will kill him first--the scoundrel! the hound!" he cried passionately, overswept by the rage that swayed him, like a tree twisted by the storm. "Milt, Milt, don't talk that way! You mustn't harm him! You shall not!" cried the girl, terror-stricken by the passionate utterances of her companion. Her words were but fuel to the flame. They goaded him into a sort of frenzy. "So you beg for him, do you? You don't want him hurt--your lover, your husband that is soon to be. By heaven! I'll wring his wrinkled, villainous neck like I would a chicken's, d--n him. He's driven me from his roof, he's taken you from me, but I'll even up old scores at last." As the maddened man started up the road, Sally frantically caught hold of him, striving to pacify his anger, to reason with him, to make him understand his unjustness toward her, but he roughly shook himself free, and moved the faster. "Milt! Milt! come back!" she cried entreatingly, but he made no answer, and hurried on. "Milt, listen to me! It's all my fault. I, alone, am to blame. Come back! For God's sake, don't do anything rash!" Again she tried to overtake him, to lay hold of him, but he broke into a run, and left her far behind, crying entreatingly to him through the darkness. CHAPTER XXVII. The darkness enveloped the hurrying man as it had done once before this night, when he stood silent and motionless in the middle of the road, near the toll-house, yet the girl still followed his retreating figure persistently through the gloom, beseeching him to return, to relinquish his fell purpose. She stopped at last, understanding that it was futile to follow further, that he was deaf to her entreaties to turn back, and that she could no longer hope to overtake him. As she stood still and listened, she heard his retreating footsteps growing fainter and fainter far up the road. Some minutes later, a second vivid band of light revealed his tall, dark figure sharply silhouetted against the sky, from the brow of the hill he had climbed, then darkness came again, like a black curtain, and blotted him from sight. The girl stood for some time in the middle of the road, with hands clasped tightly together, and tear-stained face, striving to think connectedly, to reason calmly in the face of a new trouble. What must she do? Which way to turn?