One had a magnificent sweep of the world, at night, from that terrace.  It looked out over the forest of pines to the open sea.

Madame Barras confessed to the pull of this vista.  She asked me at what direction the Atlantic entered, and when she knew, she kept it always in her sight.

It had a persisting fascination for her.  At all times and in nearly any position, she was somehow sensible of this vista; she knew the lights almost immediately, and the common small craft blinking about.  To-night she had sat for a long time in nearly utter silence here.  There was a faint light on the open sea as she got up to take her leave of us; what would it be she wondered.

I replied that it was some small craft coming in.

“A fishing-boat?”

“Hardly that,” I said, “from its lights and position it will be some swifter power-boat and, I should say, not precisely certain about the channel.”

I have been drawn here into reminiscence that did not, at the time, detain me in the hall.  What my sister had discovered to me, following Major Carrington’s remark, left me distinctly uneasy.  It was very nearly two miles to the village, the road was wholly forest and there would be no house on the way; for my father, with an utter disregard for cost, had sought the seclusion of a large acreage when he had built this absurdly elaborate villa on Mount Desert Island.

Besides I was in no mood for sleep.

And, over all probability, there might be some not entirely imaginary danger to Madame Barras.  Not precisely the danger presented in Major Carrington’s pleasantry, but the always possible danger to one who is carrying a sum of money about.  It would be considered, in the world of criminal activities, a very large sum of money; and it had been lying here, as of no value, in a drawer of the library table since the day on which the gold certificates had arrived on my check from the Boston bank.

Madame Barras had not taken the currency away as I imagined.  It was extremely careless of her, but was it not an act in character?

What would such a woman know of practical concern?

I spoke to the butler.  He should not wait up, I would let myself in; and I went out.

I remember that I got a cap and a stick out of the rack; there was no element of selection in the cap, but there was a decided subconscious direction about the selection of the stick.  It was a heavy blackthorn, with an iron ferrule and a silver weight set in the head; picked up — by my father at some Irish fair — a weapon in fact.

It was not dark.  It was one of those clear hard nights that are not uncommon on this island in midsummer; with a full moon, the road was visible even in the wood.  I swung along it with no particular precaution; I was not expecting anything to happen, and in fact, nothing did happen on the way into the village.

But in this attitude of confidence I failed to discover an event of this night that might have given the whole adventure a different ending.