He had so far succeeded in his rush that his head fell outside the open door of the Hewan, where his face caught the calm line of the moonlight streaming in. The strange white radiance enveloped him, separating him from everything round--from the men who, struggling up to their feet, suddenly hushed and awe-stricken, stood hastily aside in the shadow, looking down upon the prisoner who had thus escaped from their hands. He lay right across the threshold in all his length and strength of limb,--motionless now, no struggle in him, quenched every resistance and alarm. It was so instantaneous, that the terrible event--that sudden, incalculable change of death, which is of all things in the world the most interesting and tremendous to all lookers-on--became doubly awful, falling, with a solemn chill and horror which paralysed them, upon the astonished men around. Dead! Yet a moment since flinging off the strongest, struggling against half-a-dozen, almost escaping from their hands. He had escaped now. None of them would willingly have laid a finger on him. They stood trembling round, who had been grappling him a minute before, keen for his subjugation. The curious moon, too still and cold for any ironical meaning, streamed on him from head to foot in the opening of the doorway, displaying him as if to the regard of men and angels, with a white blaze upon his upturned face, and here and there a strong silver line where an edge of his clothing caught the whiteness in relief. Everything else was in shadow, or in the trembling uncertainty of the indoor light. The pistol, still with a little smoke from it, which curled for a moment into the shining light and disappeared, was still in his hand. This was the end of that strange visit to the little tranquil house, where he had introduced so much disturbance, so strange an overturning of every habit. He had taken it for his rest and refuge, like a master in a place where every custom of the tranquil life, and every principle and sentiment, cried out against him. He had made the son his slave, but yet had not made the mother his enemy. And yet a more wonderful thing had happened to Lew. He, whom nobody had loved in his life, save those whose vile affections can be bought for pay, and who dishonour the name--and for whom nobody would have wept had he not strayed into this peaceful abode and all but ruined and destroyed it--had tears shed for him here. Had he never come to the Hewan--to shed misery and terror around him, to kill and ruin, to rob and slay, as for some time at least he had intended--there would have been no lament made for the adventurer. But kind nature gained him this much in his end, though he no way deserved it. And the moonlight made him look like a hero slain in its defence upon the threshold of the outraged house,--the only house in the world where prayer had ever been said for this abandoned soul. CHAPTER XXIV.