The stranger quietly swept his cloak aside, and to the hostess' unspeakable relief passed out of the door.
"I never knew you," he said in low tones as he went.
The lady murmured some vain excuse about intruders, but the rector stood with annoyance written on his face.
"I beg a thousand pardons," he said to the hostess absently. "It is a great pleasure to be here,—somehow I thought I knew that man. I am sure I knew him once."
The stranger had passed down the steps, and as he passed, the nurse, lingering at the top of the staircase, flew down after him, caught his cloak, trembled, hesitated, and then kneeled in the dust.
He touched her lightly with his hand and said: "Go, and sin no more!"
With a glad cry the maid left the house, with its open door, and turned north, running. The stranger turned eastward into the night. As they parted a long, low howl rose tremulously and reverberated through the night. The colonel's wife within shuddered.
"The bloodhounds!" she said.
The rector answered carelessly:
"Another one of those convicts escaped, I suppose. Really, they need severer measures." Then he stopped. He was trying to remember that stranger's name.