The judge’s wife came in.  She was an old woman, frilled and powdered into a semblance of youth, and gorgeously gowned.  She came forward, smiling with extended hands, but when she was opposite the stranger, somewhere a chill seemed to strike her and she shuddered and cried: 

“What a draft!” as she drew a silken shawl about her and shook hands cordially; she forgot to ask who the stranger was.  The judge strode in unseeing, thinking of a puzzling case of theft.

“Eh?  What?  Oh—­er—­yes,—­good evening,” he said, “good evening.”  Behind them came a young woman in the glory of youth, and daintily silked, beautiful in face and form, with diamonds around her fair neck.  She came in lightly, but stopped with a little gasp; then she laughed gaily and said: 

“Why, I beg your pardon.  Was it not curious?  I thought I saw there behind your man”—­she hesitated, but he must be a servant, she argued—­“the shadow of great, white wings.  It was but the light on the drapery.  What a turn it gave me.”  And she smiled again.  With her came a tall, handsome, young naval officer.  Hearing his lady refer to the servant, he hardly looked at him, but held his gilded cap carelessly toward him, and the stranger placed it carefully on the rack.

Last came the rector, a man of forty, and well-clothed.  He started to pass the stranger, stopped, and looked at him inquiringly.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.  “I beg your pardon,—­I think I have met you?”

The stranger made no answer, and the hostess nervously hurried the guests on.  But the rector lingered and looked perplexed.

“Surely, I know you.  I have met you somewhere,” he said, putting his hand vaguely to his head.  “You—­you remember me, do you not?”

The stranger quietly swept his cloak aside, and to the hostess’ unspeakable relief passed out of the door.

“I never knew you,” he said in low tones as he went.

The lady murmured some vain excuse about intruders, but the rector stood with annoyance written on his face.

“I beg a thousand pardons,” he said to the hostess absently.  “It is a great pleasure to be here,—­somehow I thought I knew that man.  I am sure I knew him once.”

The stranger had passed down the steps, and as he passed, the nurse, lingering at the top of the staircase, flew down after him, caught his cloak, trembled, hesitated, and then kneeled in the dust.

He touched her lightly with his hand and said:  “Go, and sin no more!”

With a glad cry the maid left the house, with its open door, and turned north, running.  The stranger turned eastward into the night.  As they parted a long, low howl rose tremulously and reverberated through the night.  The colonel’s wife within shuddered.

“The bloodhounds!” she said.

The rector answered carelessly: 

“Another one of those convicts escaped, I suppose.  Really, they need severer measures.”  Then he stopped.  He was trying to remember that stranger’s name.