II-XV

It was comparatively a short distance to the elder
Entriken's farm, and, rather than invent a laborious
explanation of the horse's absence all
night, Gordon walked. Numberless excuses offered
him plausible reason for his own delayed return
home. -- It was better to say nothing to Lettice
of his actual intention; she was already suspicious
of his sudden interest in local gatherings.

The road beyond Greenstream village crossed a
brook and mounted by sharp turns the western
range. The day had faded to amethyst, pale in the
translucent vault of the sky, deepening in the valley;
the plum-colored smoke of evening fires ascended
in tenuous columns to an incredible height.
He walked rapidly, with the oppressed heart that
had lately grown familiar, the sense of imminence,
the feeling of advancing into a vague, towering
shadow. That last sensation was at once new and
familiar -- where before had he been conscious of a
vast, indefinable peril, blacker than night, looming
implacably before him? He summoned his old
hardihood and advanced over the still, bosky side of
the mountain.

[[243]]

p242 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p243w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p244

v?