“Who are these people,” he said, “and why do they come?” He spoke as though he addressed some present but invisible authority.

My father answered him

“They are the people of Virginia,” he said, “and they come, Zindorf, in the purpose of events that you have turned terribly backward!”

The man was in some desperate perplexity, but he had steel nerves and the devil’s courage.

He looked my father calmly in the face.

“What does all this mean?” he said.

“It means, Zindorf,” cried my father, “it means that the very things, the very particular things, that you ought to have used for the glory of God, God has used for your damnation!”

And again, in the clear April air, there entered through the open window the faint tolling of a bell.

“Listen, Zindorf!  I will tell you.  In the old abandoned church yonder, when they came to toll the bell for Duncan, the rope fell to pieces; I came along then, and Jacob Lance climbed into the steeple to toll the bell by hand.  At the first crash of sound a wolf ran out of a thicket in the ravine below him, and fled away toward the mountains.  Lance, from his elevated point, could see the wolf’s muzzle was bloody.  That would mean, that a lost horse had been killed or an estray steer.  He called down and we went in to see what thing this scavenger had got hold of.”

He paused.

“In the cut of an abandoned road we found the body of Ordez riddled with buckshot, and his pockets rifled.  But sewed up in his coat was the silk envelope with these papers.  I took possession of them as a Justice of the Peace, ordered the body sent on here, and the people to assemble.”

He extended his arm toward the faint, quivering, distant sound.

“Listen, Zindorf,” he cried; “the bell began to toll for Duncan, but it tolls now for the murderer of Ordez.  It tolls to raise the country against the assassin!”

The false monk had the courage of his master.  He stood out and faced my father.

“But can you find him, Pendleton,” he said.  And his harsh voice was firm.  “You find Ordez dead; well, some assassin shot him and carried his body into the cut of the abandoned road.  But who was that assassin?  Is Virginia scant of murderers?  Do you know the right one?”

My father answered in his great dominating voice

“God knows him, Zindorf, and I know him! . . .  The man who murdered Ordez made a fatal blunder . . .  He used a sign of God in the service of the devil and he is ruined!”

The big man stepped slowly backward into the room, while my father’s voice, filling the big empty spaces of the house, followed after him.

“You are lost, Zindorf!  Satan is insulted, and God is outraged!  You are lost!”

There was a moment’s silence; from outside came the sound of men and horses.  The notes of the girl, light, happy, ascended from the lower chamber, as she sang about her preparations for the journey.  Zindorf continued to step awfully backward.  And Lucian Morrow, shaken and sober, cried out in the extremity of fear: