John Holmes, the staunch friend of the family, had an engagement that evening with the Carr’s; so he started out to overtake Dorothy, hearing she had gone on just ahead of him.
As he hurried along through the coming night, the moon’s white beams fell deep down in the beechen stems. Now and again wood-folk wakened from their dreams and carolled brokenly. The spirit of delicious peace that pervaded the lowering twilight enriched and beautified the reverie that rendered the dreamer oblivious to the present. His thoughts, his hopes were far afield—wandering along beckoning paths of the unexplored future. The office of prosecuting attorney was only the first step. He dreamed of Congress, too.
“Why shouldn’t one do whatever one wants to do?”
Thus he mused, when suddenly the sound of crashing underbrush startled him into consciousness of the present and a dark outline dashed into the road just ahead from out of the dense thicket that lay to his left. Before he could collect his scattered senses sufficiently to question or intercept the excited runner, the man dodged to one side, and sped along the road until he passed out of sight around an angle of the wood. Holmes called after him to stop, but his command was not obeyed.
“What’s the matter?” he shouted after the flying figure; but receiving no answer, again he cried:
“Stop, I say.” And this time a reply came in the shape of a faint groan from near by in the wood. He dashed into the darkness of the forest in the direction from whence the sound had come, his flesh quivering and his breath coming in gasps as an overwhelming sense of apprehension seized him.
At first the gloom was such that he could see nothing distinctly and he groped his way forward with difficulty. The moon that for a moment had passed under a cloud now again shone brightly out, filling all the open spaces with a play of wavering light. He forced himself into the thicket from where he again heard a low sound—writhing, twisting his way through the thick, hindering stems, and there before him, in a little opening, he saw what appeared to be a prostrate human form.
He sprang toward it and drew the clinging boughs aside to let the moonlight in. Then he saw it was the figure of a woman. Two ghastly gashes, edged with crimson, stained the white flesh of her throat.
The awful meaning of the crime, as he thought of the headlong haste of the flying man, surged over Holmes. He quickly knelt to gaze into her face and as he gazed a terrible cry broke from his lips.
“Dorothy! Oh, my God!”