Panic-stricken, they looked up, saw, and fled. Those in front also saw and bombarded the belfry with shot and pistol ball. And then, on their side of the belfry, the same downward, spiteful flashes leaped out, and two men, shot through the shoulder and the arm, cried out in dismay, and they all fell back, stampeded, at the deadliness of the spiteful thing in the tower, the gun that carried so true and so far--so much farther than their own cheap guns. They rushed out of its range, gathered in knots and cursed and wondered who it was. But they dared not come nearer. Travis lay still. He could not speak now, for the blood choked him when he opened his mouth, and the stars which had once been above him now wheeled and floated below, and around him. And that Sweeter Thing that had been behind the stars now seemed to surround him as a halo, a halo of silence which seemed to fit the silence of his own soul and become part of him forever. It was all around him, as he had often seen it around the summer moon; only now he felt it where he only saw it before. And now, too, it was in his heart and filled it with a sweet sadness, a sadness that hurt, it was so sweet, and which came with an odor, the smell of the warm rain falling on the dust of a summer of long ago. And all his life passed before him--he lived it again--even more than he had remembered before--even the memory of his mother whom he never knew; but now he knew her and he reached up his arms--for he was in a cradle and she bent over him--he reached up his arms and said: "_Oh, mother, now I know what eternity is--it's remembering before and after!_" Visions, too--and Alice Westmore--Alice, pitying and smiling approval--smiling,--and then a burning passionate kiss, and when he would kiss again it was Helen's lips he met. And through it all the great uplifting joy, and something which made him try to shout and say: "The atonement--the atonement--" Clear now and things around him seemed miles away. He knew he was sinking and he kicked one foot savagely against the turret to feel again the sensation of life in his limb. Then he struck himself in his breast with his right fist to feel it there. But in spite of all he saw a cloud of darkness form beyond the rim of the starlit horizon and come sweeping over him, coming in black waves that would rush forward and then stop--forward, and stop--forward and stop.... And the stops kept time exactly with his heart, and he knew the last stop of the wave meant the last beat of his heart--then forward ... for the last time.... "Oh, God, not yet!... Look!" His heart rallied at the sight and beat faster, making the black waves pulse, in the flow and ebb of it.... The thing was below him ... a man ... a ghostly, vengeful thing, whose face was fierce in hatred ... crawling, crawling, up to the rock fence--a snake with the face ... the eyes of Jud Carpenter....