Orrin will yet make himself debtor to the Colonel. Something has happened which proves that fate--or man--is working against him to this end, and that he must from the very force of circumstances finally succumb. I say _man_, but do I not mean _woman_? Ah, no, no, no! my pen ran away with me, my thoughts played me false. It could have been no woman, for if it was, then is Juliet a--Let me keep to facts. I have not self-control enough for speculation. To-day the sun set red. As we had been having gray skies, and more or less rain for a fortnight, the brightness and vivid crimson in the west drew many people to their doors. I was amongst them, and as I stood looking intently at the sky that was now one blaze of glory from horizon to zenith, Orrin stepped up behind me and said: "Do you want to take a ride to-night?" Seeing him look more restless and moody than ever, I answered "Yes," and accordingly about eight that night he rode up to my door and we started forth. I thought he would turn in the direction of the stone house, for one night when I had allowed myself to go there in my curiosity at its progress, I had detected him crouching in one of the thickest shadows cast by the surrounding trees. But if any such idea had been in his mind, it soon vanished, for almost the instant I was in the saddle, he wheeled himself about and led the way eastward, whipping and spurring his horse as if it were a devil's ride he contemplated, and not that easy, restful canter under the rising moon demanded by our excited spirits and the calm, exquisite beauty of the summer night. "Are you not coming?" was shouted back to me, as the distance increased between us. My answer was to spur my own horse, and as we rode once more side by side, I could not but note what a wild sort of beauty there was in him as he thus gave himself up to the force of his feelings and the restless energy of this harum-scarum ride. "Very different," thought I, "would the Colonel look on a horse at this hour of night"; and wondered if Juliet could see him thus she would any longer wound him by her hesitations, after having driven him by her coquetries to expect full and absolute surrender on her part. Did he guess my thoughts, or was his mind busy with the same, that he suddenly cried in harsh but thrilling tones: "If I had her where she ought to be, here behind me on this horse, I would ride to destruction before I would take her back again to the town and the temptations which beset her while she can hear the sound of hammer upon stone." "And you would be right," I was about to say in some bitterness, I own, when the full realization of the road we were upon stopped me and I observed instead: "You would take her yonder where you hope to see her happy, though no other woman lives within a half-mile of the place."