“Truth was, Kitty was back into childhood, out there in the hay—­merry and sweet as a rosebud she looked in her old faded bonnet.  I see her just as plain, this poor child—­that did so much mischief without meaning to hurt anybody.  How was she to know that fierce fires of jealous, passionate hatred were at work, kindled by her to flame that sunshiny afternoon, as she danced along the meadow with her rake, happy as the June day seemed long?

“No, sir, you need not be impatient, for the story is about done.

“The last load of hay was pitched as the glowing sun went down.  The thunderstorm had passed to the hills beyond, and on the horizon clouds lay piled, purple black.  The men come in to supper, and then went out again.  Kitty was busy with her dishes in the kitchen till dark; then there come a flash of lightning, and a growlin’ of thunder.  The last dish was put away, and so the girl went sauntering out, down to the bush of cluster roses by the garden gate, where she could look over into the barn-yard and call to the men still at work with the hay.

“Something took her farther—­’twas as if a hand led her—­and she crossed the yard, and down the lane she went till she got to the meadow gate that stood open as the men had left it after bringing that last heavy wain through.

“The moon was up—­a moon that drifted serenely through the banks of clouds, ever upwards to the zenith.

“Sir, did you ever think—­and being a stranger, sir, you must excuse the question—­did you ever think of the wicked deeds that moon has looked upon since the creation of mortal man?  Oh, yes, I know it, I know it well; in God’s sunlight, that sin would never have been committed; but in the moonlight—­the calm, still moonlight—­passions rise to fever heat, the blow is struck, and man turns away with the curse of Cain written on his brow.

“Kitty, standing with her back against the gate, her eyes following the flitting light across the meadow to the mill-race by the path beyond, all at once felt her heart leap with nameless horror.  Yet all she could see was shadows, for the figures was out of sight.  All she could see was shadows—­shadows cast upon the moonlit meadowland where she had gaily danced with her rake in hand only a few hours before.  Two giant forms (so the moonbeams made it) swayed back and forth, gripped together like one, scarcely moving from one spot as they wrestled, as though ’twould take force to uproot them—­force like that of the whirlwind in the spring, that tore the old oak like a sapling from its foundations laid centuries ago.

“Kitty, struck dumb like one in nightmare, fled across the meadow towards the mill-race.

“As she went, the shadows lifted and changed with a cruel uprising that told her the end was near.  If she could have cried out then, and if they had heard!  But as she fled on unheeding, the moon was suddenly obscured.  It was pitch dark, and the muttering thunder broke into a roar that shook the earth under Kitty’s feet.  How long was it before the moon drifted from out that cloud-bank, where lightning played with zig-zag flames?  How long?