It was growing dark. Away in the west a pale stream of light was fading smoothly out, absorbed by the velvet softness of the summer night. There was no moon, but the starlit vault shone dazzlingly upon the shadowed valley. Already among the trees the yellow oil lamps were shining within the half-hidden houses.
From within a dense clump of trees, high up the northern slope of the valley, a man’s slight figure made its way. His movements were slow, deliberate, even furtive. For some moments he stood peering out at a point below where a woman’s figure was rapidly making its way up the steep trail toward the old Meeting House.
The man’s eyes were straining in the darkness for the outline of the woman’s figure was indistinct, only just discernible in the starlight. She came on, and he could distinctly hear her voice humming an old, familiar air. She evidently had no thought of the possibility that her movements could be of any interest to anybody but herself.
She reached the Meeting House and paused. Then the watching man heard the rattle of a key in the lock. The humming had ceased. The next moment there was the sound of a turning handle, and a tight-fitting door being thrust open. The woman’s figure had disappeared within the building.
The man left the sheltering bush and moved out on to the trail. He passed one thin hand across his brow, as though to clear the thoughts behind of their last murkiness after a drunken slumber. He stretched himself wearily as though stiff from his unyielding bed of sun-baked earth. Then he moved down the trail toward the Meeting House, selecting the scorched grass at the side of it to muffle the sound of his footsteps.
His weariness seemed to have entirely passed now, and all his attention was fixed upon the rough exterior of the old building, which had passed through such strange vicissitudes to finally become the house of worship it now was. With its old, heavy-plastered walls, and its long, reed-thatched roof, so heavy and vastly thick, it was a curiosity; the survival of days when men and beasts met upon a common arena and played out the game of life and death, each as it suited him, with none but the victor in the game to say him nay.
The man felt something of the influence of the place now as he drew near. Nor could he help feeling that the game that went on about it now had changed little enough in its purpose. The rules may have received modification, but the spirit was still the same. Men were still struggling for victory over some one else, and beneath the veneer of a growing civilization, passions, just as untamed, raged and worked their will upon their ill-starred possessors.
Reaching the building, he moved cautiously around the walls till he came to a window. It was closed, and a curtain was drawn across it. He passed on till he came to another window. It was partially open, and, though the curtain was drawn across it, the opening had disarranged the curtain, and a beam of light shone through.
He pressed his face toward the opening so that his mouth was at its level. Then he spoke softly, in a voice that was little more than a whisper——
“Kate!” he called. “Kate! It is I—Charlie. I’ve—I’ve been waiting for you, and want to speak to you.”