He went into the garden, crossing the cattle lane, where the footprints of the cows were fresh in the dust.  Near at hand he heard a voice shouting.  It was the voice of the overseer, but the sound startled him, and he awoke abruptly to himself and his forty years.  The spell of the past was broken—­even the riotous old garden, blending its many colours in a single blur, could not bring it back.  The chrysanthemums and the roses and the hardy zenias that came up uncared for were powerless to reinvoke the spirit of the place.  If Eugenia, in her full-blown motherhood, had risen in an overgrown path he might have passed her by unheeding.  His Eugenia was a girl in a muslin gown, endowed with immortal youth—­the youth of visions unfulfilled and desire unquenched.  His Eugenia could never grow old—­could never alter—­could never leave the eternal sunshine of dead autumns.  In his nostrils was the keen sweetness of old-fashioned flowers, but his thoughts were not of them, and, turning presently, he went back as he had come.  It was dark when at last he reached the judge’s house and sat down to supper.

He was with the judge until midnight, when, before going to his room, he descended the stairs and went out upon the porch.  He had been thinking of the elections three days hence, and the outcome seemed to him more hopeful than it had done when he first came forward as a candidate.  The uncertainty was almost as great, this he granted; but behind him he believed to be the pressure of the people’s will—­which the schemes of politicians had not turned.  Tuesday would prove nothing—­nor had the conventions that had been held; when the meeting of the caucus came, he would still be in ignorance—­unaware of traps that had been laid or surprises to be sprung.  It was the mark to which his ambition had aimed—­the end to which his career had faced—­that now rose before him, and yet in his heart there was neither elation nor distrust.  He had done his best—­he had fought fairly and well, and he awaited what the day might bring forth.

Above him a full moon was rising, and across the green the crooked path wound like a silver thread, leading to the glow of a night-lamp that burned in a sick-room.  The night, the air, the shuttered houses were as silent as the churchyard, where the tombstones glimmered, row on row.  Only somewhere on the vacant green a hound bayed at the moon.

He looked out an instant longer, and was turning back, when his eye caught a movement among the shadows in the distant lane.  A quick thought came to him, and he kept his gaze beneath the heavy maples, where the moonshine fell in flecks.  For a moment all was still, and then into the light came the figure of a man.  Another followed, another, and another, passing again into the dark and then out into the brightness that led into the little gully far beyond.  There was no sound except the baying of the dog; the figures went on, noiseless and orderly and grim, from dark