The tone of the absorbed voice reached where heretofore it had never touched.
"I'll have none of thee!" commanded Nathaniel, his face dangerously purple. "Your words are of the—the devil! Leave me! leave me!" And for the second time Priscilla was ordered from her father's house.
It did not matter. It was all so useless, and the future was so blank. Still, to go back to Master Farwell's just then was impossible, and Priscilla turned toward the wood road leading to the Far Hill Place. She had no plan, no purpose. She was drifting, drifting, and could not see her way. The bright sun touched her comfortingly. In the shadow it was chilly; but the red rock was warm and luring. And so she came to the open space and the almost forgotten shrine where once she had raised her Strange God.
She sat down upon a fallen tree and looked over the little, many-islanded bay to the Secret Portage. Through that she seemed to pass yearningly, and her eyes grew large and strained. Then she stretched out her arms, her young, empty arms.
"My Garden!" she called; "my Garden, my dear, dear love and Margaret's God! Margaret's and mine!"
And so she sat for a while longer. Then, because the chill air crept closer and closer, she arose and faced the old, bleached skull. The winters had killed the sheltering vines that once hid it from all eyes but hers. It stood bare and hideous, as if demanding that she again worship it. A frenzy overpowered Priscilla. That whitened, dead thing brought back memories that hurt and stung by their very sweetness. She rushed to the spot and seized the forked stick upon which the skull rested.
"This for all—Unknown Gods!" she cried in breathless passion, and dashed the skull to the ground. "And this! and this!" She trampled it. "They shall not keep you upon shrines! They shall not keep you hidden from all in the Garden!" With that she took a handful of the shattered god and flung it far and wide, with her blazing eyes fixed on the Secret Portage.
Standing so, she looked like a priestess of old defying all falseness and traditional wrong.
Among the trees Richard Travers gazed upon the scene with a kind of horror gripping him.
He was not a superstitious man, but he was a worn and weary one, and he had come to the Far Hill Place, two days before, because, after much searching, he had failed to find Priscilla Glynn, and his love was hurt and desperate. He had wanted to hide and suffer where no eyes could penetrate. But he had discovered that for a man to return to his boyhood was but to undergo the torture of those who are haunted by lost spirits. It had been damnable—that dreary, dismantled house back on the hill! The nights had maddened him and left him unable to cope intelligently with the days. Nothing comforting had been there. The pale boy he once had been taunted him with memories of lowered ideals, unfilled promise and purpose. He had travelled a long distance from the Far Hill Place, and he was going back to fight it out—somehow, somewhere. He would stop at Master Farwell's and then take the night steamer for the old battle-ground. And just at that moment, in the open space, he saw the strange sight that stopped his breath and heart for an instant.