On and on he walked, half unconscious of where he was going, and then, on a sudden he seemed to become aware of a light flashing somewhere ahead of him through the trees, now disappearing, now, as he went onward, springing again into view, much as some gigantic will-o’-the-wisp might have done. And at the same instant, looking around him, he perceived, to his surprise, that unconsciously he had been following the trail of a little rough hewn path, winding first to right, and then to left, but always forward, and always toward the light. Partly from a real curiosity as to what it might be, partly with enough of the instinct of boyhood days left in him, to make him feel a perfectly irrational delight in the sense of nocturnal adventure, he skirted his way along through the woods, and a moment later found himself standing on a little elevation of rock, gazing through the trees at the house which stood over across from him, not a hundred yards away, amid the circle of birches which, gleaming like silver in the faint moonlight, surrounded it with their protection as with a natural palisade.
Something singular there seemed to him about the whole affair. The cottage he could not place; and idly he began to wonder whether, intent upon his day-dreams, he had wandered farther than he had intended, and had crossed the boundaries of The Birches to trespass on some neighboring domain. His vivid imagination had even begun to weave a web of vague, elusive romance about the cottage itself, based partly, perhaps, on the spell of the moonlight, partly on the fact that despite the lateness of the hour a light still gleamed in the upper, and one in the lower, hall. And then, with a realizing rush of sober common sense, with a smile at his wandering fancies, he came back to real life again, and had turned, though half regretfully, to go, when suddenly, at the very instant, he stopped, and again stood still. A dark figure had come across the lawn in the rear of the house, walked up to the door without reconnoitering, and disappeared within.
A moment or two of silence. Then the light down-stairs was extinguished, and an instant later the one above was suddenly darkened, until only the faintest glimmer remained. And again Vaughan, though half doubtfully this time, smiled at his folly. Surely this was the novelist at his worst. Striving to find something unusual and strange, worthy of his notice and comment, in what? In the coming home of some prosaic householder, doubtless tempted into a longer stay than usual at the village by the charms of the good fellowship of tavern or grocery store.
Suddenly his heart leaped. What was that? Something mysterious was on foot, then, after all. From within the house came sounds as if of a struggle—a crash, as of furniture overturned—a single half-choked, muffled cry. Then a rush and clatter of feet on the stairs, and then, before his wide-open, straining eyes, from the rear door of the house a figure emerged, followed almost instantly by another. The pursued, the taller and slimmer of the two, and evidently by far the fleeter of foot, ran, as one who knows his ground, straight for the thickest cluster of trees, and reaching them, dived into their shelter like a hare. The pursuer, following for a space, all at once slackened his speed, swerving and bearing aimlessly away, constantly farther and farther to the left, in a wide half circle, his body bent all the time more and more to one side, his head thrown back and upward, as if spent and exhausted, even with the brief effort he had made. And finally, fairly doubling on his tracks, he came headed straight for the rock at the summit of which Vaughan stood. Nearer and nearer he came, and then, quickly, as in the faint moonlight the man’s face became more plainly visible, Vaughan drew one instant gasping breath of sickened horror. The face was set, as if rigid with agony, the eyes were unnaturally wide, and over the upturned forehead and the pallid cheeks flowed something hideously dark and glistening. And then, convulsively, with a ghastly semblance of an athlete who finishes his race, the figure threw one arm high into the air, as if grasping for support, staggered, pitched forward, and fell motionless, lying, in the darkness below, a huddled heap in the road.
To Vaughan, all unschooled in the darker experiences of life, came a sudden access of blind terror. He knew that he should at once descend, yet, knowing it, stood motionless, his will unequal to the task. And then, as he sought to nerve himself for the trial, nature intervened. At once he was conscious that his heart was throbbing so faintly and so fast that his ear could scarcely separate the beats; something tightened in his throat; the silver birches floated and turned before him, and he found himself nearer fainting than he had ever been in his life before. Slowly, after what seemed to him an indefinite period of semi-consciousness, his brain again cleared; distrustingly he loosed his hold on the sapling which he had grasped, and with genuine courage, sought once more to approach the edge of the little cliff and begin his descent.
Yet that descent, spite of his newly taken resolution, was now never to be made. At the edge he gave one shuddering look below, then hastily and with caution drew back, peering fixedly through the screen of leaf and branch. The man, indeed, still lay where he had fallen, but now, creeping down the driveway, came the first figure, returning, as if impelled by some impulse too powerful to resist. Stealthily it approached the huddled figure on the ground, looked around listening, then swiftly knelt, turned the body over, and raised the head upon its knee. Then came the quick spurt of a match, and Vaughan, leaning forward with fascinated gaze, saw more than he wished to see—saw what he would have given anything in the world not to have seen; for the motionless figure, with head drooped horribly to one side, hair matted, and face streaked and dabbled with red, was that of Tom Satterlee, and the face which bent over him, showing pale and horror-stricken in the light of the tiny flame, was the face of Jack Carleton. Vaughan turned and ran.