He ploughed along for what seemed like endless miles, calling as he went, and hearing his own voice come back to him, over and over again, like a mocking spirit. The wind, the rain, and the darkness conspired together to make what was rough travelling in the daytime almost impassable; strong as he was, Austin sank down more than once for a few minutes on some fallen log over which he stumbled. At these times the vision of Sylvia standing in the midst of the still-smoking ruins of the buildings, which had been, in spite of their wretched condition, dear to him because they were almost all he had in the world, seemed to rise before him with horrible reality: Sylvia, dressed in her black, black clothes, with her soft dark hair, and her deep-blue eyes, and her vivid red lips which so seldom either drooped or smiled but lay tightly closed together, a crimson line in her white face, which was no more sorrowful than it was mask-like. The expression was as pure and as sad and as gentle as that of a Mater Dolorosa he had chanced to see in a collection of prints at the Wallacetown Library, and yet--and yet--Austin knew instinctively that the dead husband, whoever he might have been, and his own brother Thomas were not the only men besides himself who had found it irresistibly alluring. "I'm poorer than ever now," he groaned to himself, "and ignorant, and mean, and dirty, and a beast in every sense of the word; I can't ever atone for the way I've treated her--for the way I've--but if I could only find her and _try_, oh, I've got to! Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia--" The rain struck about by the wind, which had risen again, lashed against the leaves of the trees, and the wet, swaying boughs struck against his face as he started on again; but the storm and his own footsteps were the only sounds he could hear. It was growing rapidly colder, and he felt more than once in his pocket to make sure that the little flask of brandy he had brought with him was still safe, and tried to fasten his drenched coat more tightly about him. His teeth chattered, and he shivered; but this, he realized, was more with nervousness than with chill. "If I'm cold, what must she be, in that linen habit? And she's so little and frail--" He pulled himself together. "I must stop worrying like this--of course, I'll find her,--alive and unharmed. Some things are too dreadful--they just can't happen. I've got to have a chance to beg her forgiveness for all I've said and done and thought; I've got to have something to give me courage to start all over again, and make a man of myself yet--to cleanse myself of ingratitude--and bitterness--and evil passions. Sylvia--Sylvia--Sylvia!" It seemed as if he had called it a thousand times; suddenly he stopped short, listening, his heart beating like a hammer, then standing still in his breast. It couldn't be--but, oh, it was, it was-- "Austin! Is that you?" "Yes, yes, yes, where are you?"