“Is that all?” I said.

“That is all.  You will come to the wedding, Mr. Blake.  You shall see her arrayed for her husband, dressed all in white, as a bride should be.  You shall see her lips touch mine.  You shall see us go away together—­the woman you love, and the man who has crushed you as if you were a worm.”

This maddened me.  By a tremendous effort of will I was free.  “That shall never be.  Somehow, some way, I will thwart you,” I cried.  “I will free myself from you; I will snap your cruel chain asunder.”

“I defy you!” he said.  “You can do nothing that I have commanded you not to do.  For the rest I care not a jot.”

He went away, leaving me alone, and then all the sensations of the previous nights came back to me.  I remembered what the ghost was supposed to foretell, and the evil influence the dark pond was said to have.  I saw again the large red hand on the water’s surface.  I recalled dimly the struggle, the fighting, the strange feeling I had as my senses began to leave me.  Could I have killed him?  If I did, I was guiltless of crime.  It was not my heart that conceived the thought; it was not I who really did the deed.  I had no pangs of conscience, no feeling of remorse, and yet the thought that I had hurried a man into eternity was horrible.

I wandered in the plantation for hours, brooding, thinking, despairing.  No pen can describe what I felt, no words can convey to the mind the thoughts and pains of my mind and heart.  Never did I love Miss Forrest so much, never was Voltaire’s villainy so real; and yet I was to lose her, and that man—­a fiend in human form—­was to wed her.  I could do nothing.  He had paralyzed my energies.  He had set a command before me which was as ghastly as hell, and yet I dared not disobey.  I, a young, strong man, was a slave—­a slave of the worst kind.  I was the plaything, the tool of a villain.  I had to do as he told me; I had to refrain from doing what he told me I was not to do.  I had done I knew not what.  Perchance a hangman’s rope was hanging near me even now.  I could not tell.  And yet I dared not rise from my chains, and see whether the things I had been accused of doing were true.

I went back to the house.  Voltaire was gone, while the guests and family were having their lunch.  I felt that I could not join them, so I went into the library.  I had not been there ten minutes when Miss Forrest entered.  She looked pale and worried.  I suppose that I, too, must have been haggard, for she started when she saw me.  She hesitated a moment, and then spoke.

“The whole party are going for a ride this afternoon.  They have just been making arrangements.  They are going to ask you to join them.  Shall you go?” she asked.

“No; I shall not go,” I replied.

“Will you come here at three o’clock?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering what she meant; but I had not time to ask her, for two young men came into the room.