The soft flooding moonlight sent its radiance into the gloomy room, touching lovingly its dark carven furniture and bringing into sharp relief the lithe contour of the figure under the fleecy coverlid, the crisp damp hair, the expressive face, and the wide-open dreamy eyes. John Valiant’s thoughts had fled a thousand miles away, to the tall girl who all his life had seemed to stand out from his world, aloof and unsurpassed—Katharine Fargo. He tried to picture her, a perfect chatelaine, graceful and gracious as a tall, white, splendid lily, in this dead house that seemed still to throb with living passions. But the picture subtly eluded him and he stirred uneasily under the blanket. After a time his hand stretched out to the reading-stand and drew the glass with its vivid blossom [Pg 108]nearer, till, in his nostrils, its musky odor mingled with the dew-wet scent of the honeysuckle from the garden. At last his eyes closed. “Every man carries his fate ... on a riband about his neck,” he muttered drowsily, and then, “Roses ... red roses....” And so he fell asleep. [Pg 109] CHAPTER XIII THE HUNT He awoke to a musical twittering and chirping, to find the sun pouring into the dusty room in a very glory. He rolled from the blanket and stood upright, filling his lungs with a long deep breath of satisfaction. He felt singularly light-hearted and alive. The bulldog came bounding through the window, dirty from the weeds, and flung himself upon his master in a canine rapture. “Get out!” quoth the latter, laughing. “Stop licking my feet! How the dickens do you suppose I’m to get into my clothes with your ridiculous antics going on? Down, I say!” He began to dress rapidly. “Listen to those birds, Chum!” he said. “There’s an ornithological political convention going on out there. Wish I knew what they were chinning about—they’re so mightily in earnest. See them splashing in that fountain? If you had any self-respect you’d be taking a bath yourself. You need it! Hark!” He broke off and listened. “Who’s that singing?” The sound drew nearer—a lugubrious chant, with the weirdest minor reflections, faintly suggestive [Pg 110]of the rag-time ditties of the music-halls, yet with a plaintive cadence: “As he went mowin’ roun’ de fiel’ Er moc’sin bit him on de heel. Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh, Da-a-dee-e-eaye! “Dey kyah’d him in ter his Sally deah. She say, ‘Mah Lawd, yo’ looks so queah!’ Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh, Da-a-dee-e-e-aye!” A smile of genuine delight crossed the listener’s face. “That would make the everlasting fortune of a music-hall artist,” Valiant muttered, as, coatless, and with a towel over his arm, he stepped to the piazza. “Dey laid him down—spang on de groun’. He-e-e shet-up-his-eyes en looked all aroun’. Right toodle-link-uh-day, Right toodle-link-uh-day,