He stepped ashore and
passed the painter of his dory through its ring.
On the crest of the island, at the very spot where, scientists averred,
a meteorite had fallen in some prehistoric age, there stood a thick
grove, chiefly of hemlock trees. Here on this night he paused. A strange
inertness filled all nature. Not a whisper from the branches overhead,
not a rustle from the dark mold underfoot. Moonlight in one place
flecked the motionless leaves of an alder. Trunk and twigs were quite
dissolved in darkness--nothing but the silver pattern of the leaves was
shown in random sprays. He felt for an instant disembodied, like these
leaves--as if, taking one step too many, he had floated out of his own
body and might not return.
"Bear and forbear," he thought. "You wouldn't have stirred, let her say
what she would," his heart whispered to the silver leaves.
But he could not forget that wild glance, the wet hand clinging to his
wrist, the laugh repeated like an echo from the symphony of that
November hillside. He reproached himself withal. What was known of Cad
Sills? Little known, and nothing cared to be known. A waif, pursuing him
invisibly with a twinkle or flare from her passionate eyes. She was the
daughter of a sea captain by his fifth wife. He had escaped the other
four.
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