No more was said; indeed, there was little opportunity for conversation. The cattle were to watch; it was still dark; the men were weary with the hard riding and the unnatural pitch to which their voices had been raised. David felt that he must get away at once; any moment a messenger from the camp might bring the news of Whaley's murder; and he knew well that suspicion would at once rest upon him. He offered to return to camp and report "all right," and the offer was accepted; but, at the first turn, he rode away into the darkness of a belt of timber. The cayotes howled in the distance; there was a rush of unclean night birds above him, and the growling of panther cats in the underwood. But in his soul there was a terror and a darkness that made all natural terrors of small account. His own hands were hateful to him. He moaned out loudly like a man in an agony. He measured in every moments' space the height from which he had fallen; the blessings from which he must be an outcast, if by any means he might escape the shameful punishment of his deed. He remembered at that hour his father's love, the love that had so finely asserted itself when the occasion for it came. Lulu's tenderness and beauty, the hope of home and children, the respect of his fellow-men, all sacrificed for a moment's passionate revenge. He stood face to face with himself, and, dropping the reins, cowered down full of terror and grief at the future which he had evoked. Within hopeless sight of Hope and Love and Home, he was silent for hours gazing despairingly after the life which had sailed by him, and not daring-- "--to search through what sad maze, Thenceforth his incommunicable ways Follow the feet of death." CHAPTER II. "--and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." James i. 15. Blessed are they who have seen Nature in those rare, ineffable moments when she appears to be asleep--when the stars, large and white, bend stilly over the dreaming earth, and not a breath of wind stirs leaf or flower. On such a night James Lorimer sat upon his south verandah smoking; and his niece Lulu, white and motionless as the magnolia flowers above her, mused the hour away beside him. There were little ebony squads of negroes huddled together around the doors of their quarters, but they also were singularly quiet. An angel of silence had passed by no one was inclined to disturb the tranquil calm of the dreaming earth.