But where could I fly?  No spot in the wide world was secret enough to conceal me now.  I was a marked man.  Better to stand my ground, and take the consequences, than to act the coward’s part and slink away like those other men of blood I had so often sat in judgment upon.

Had I but followed this impulse!  Had I but gone among my fellows, shown them the mark of Cain upon my forehead, and prayed, not for indulgence, but punishment, what days of gnawing misery I should have been spared!

But the horror of what lay at my feet drove me from the Hollow and drove me the wrong way.  As my steps fell mechanically into the trail down which I had come in innocence and kindly purpose only a few minutes before, a startling thought shot through my benumbed mind.  The woman had shown no haste in her turning!  There had been a naturalness in her movement, a dignity and a grace which spoke of ease, not shock.  What if she had not seen!  What if my deed was as yet unknown!  Might I not have time for—­for what?  I did not stop to think; I just pressed on, saying to myself, “Let Providence decide.  If I meet any one before I reach my own door, my doom is settled.  If I do not—­”

And I did not.  As I turned into the lane from the ravine I heard a sound far down the slope, but it was too distant to create apprehension, and I went calmly on, forcing myself into my usual leisurely gait, if only to gain some control over my own emotions before coming under Oliver’s eye.

That sound I have never understood.  It could not have been Scoville since in the short time which had passed, he could not have fled from the point where I heard him last into the ravine below Ostrander Lane.  But if not he, who was it?  Or if it was he, and some other hand threw his stick across my path, whose was this hand and why have we never heard anything about it?  It is a question which sometimes floats through my mind, but I did not give it a thought then.  I was within sight of home and Oliver’s possible presence; and all other dread was as nothing in comparison to what I felt at the prospect of meeting my boy’s eye.  My boy’s eye! my greatest dread then, and my greatest dread still!  In my terror of it I walked as to my doom.

The house which I had left empty, I found empty; Oliver had not yet returned.  The absolute stillness of the rooms seemed appalling.  Instinctively, I looked up at the clock.  It had stopped.  Not at the minute—­I do not say it was at the minute—­but near, very near the time when from an innocent man I became a guilty one.  Appalled at the discovery, I fled to the front.  Opening the door, I looked out.  Not a creature in sight, and not a sound to be heard.  The road was as lonely and seemingly as forsaken as the house.  Had time stopped here too?  Were the world and its interests at a pause in horror of my deed?  For a moment I believed it; then more natural sensations intervened and, rejoicing at this lack of disturbance where disturbance meant discovery, I stepped inside again and went and sat down in my own room.