It was a night of many stars and a keen wind.  Moved each in his degree by its beauty, Haward and MacLean stood regarding it before they should go, the one back to his solitary chamber, the other to the store which was to be his charge no longer than the morrow.  “I feel the air that blows from the hills,” said the Highlander.  “It comes over the heather; it hath swept the lochs, and I hear it in the sound of torrents.”  He lifted his face to the wind.  “The breath of freedom!  I shall have dreams to-night.”

When he was gone, Haward, left alone, looked for a while upon the heights of stars.  “I too shall dream to-night,” he breathed to himself.  “To-morrow all will be well.”  His gaze falling from the splendor of the skies to the swaying trees, gaunt, bare, and murmuring of their loss to the hurrying river, sadness and vague fear took sudden possession of his soul.  He spoke her name over and over; he left the house and went into the garden.  It was the garden of the dying year, and the change that in the morning he had smiled to see now appalled him.  He would have had it June again.  Now, when on the morrow he and Audrey should pass through the garden, it must be down dank and leaf-strewn paths, past yellow and broken stalks, with here and there wan ghosts of flowers.

He came to the dial, and, bending, pressed his lips against the carven words that, so often as they had stood there together, she had traced with her finger.  “Love! thou mighty alchemist!” he breathed.  “Life! that may now be gold, now iron, but never again dull lead!  Death”—­He paused; then, “There shall be no death,” he said, and left the withered garden for the lonely, echoing house.

CHAPTER XXIV

AUDREY COMES TO WESTOVER

It was ten of the clock upon this same night when Hugon left the glebe house.  Audrey, crouching in the dark beside her window, heard him bid the minister, as drunk as himself, good-night, and watched him go unsteadily down the path that led to the road.  Once he paused, and made as if to return; then went on to his lair at the crossroads ordinary.  Again Audrey waited,—­this time by the door.  Darden stumbled upstairs to bed.  Mistress Deborah’s voice was raised in shrill reproach, and the drunken minister answered her with oaths.  The small house rang with their quarrel, but Audrey listened with indifference; not trembling and stopping her ears, as once she would have done.  It was over at last, and the place sunk in silence; but still the girl waited and listened, standing close to the door.  At last, as it was drawing toward midnight, she put her hand upon the latch, and, raising it very softly, slipped outside.  Heavy breathing came from the room where slept her guardians; it went evenly on while she crept downstairs and unbarred the outer door.  Sure and silent and light of touch, she passed like a spirit from the house that had given her shelter, nor once looked back upon it.