would have never seen again. His face went pale beneath its coat of tan,
his shoulders trembled slightly as he tried to shrug them with
indifference to brace his courage up. Twice he started from the spot,
determined, evidently, to shut away the crowding and unpleasant
recollections it recalled to him, twice he returned to it, to carefully,
if with evident repugnance, make closer study of some detail of its
rugged picturesqueness. More than once, as he lingered there against his
will, his hands raised upward to his eyes as if to shut away from them
some vivid memory-picture, but each time they fell, with strangely
hopeless gesture. The picture which they strove to hide plainly was not
before his eyes in the actual scene, but painted in the brain behind
them and not to be shut out with screening, claw-curved fingers.

The effect of this especial spot on the old man, indeed, was most
remarkable. His lips, as he stood gazing there, moved constantly as if
with words unspoken, and, once or twice, the crowding sentences found
actual but not articulate voice. Whenever this occurred he started, to
look about behind him as if he feared that some one, who might overhear,
had crept up upon him slyly. Finally, making absolutely certain that he
had not been observed by any human being, and evidently yielding to an
impulse almost irresistible, he went over the ground carefully,
examining each foot of the little rocky platform with not a loving, but
a fascinated observation.

When he finally left the spot a striking change had come upon his
features. He had reached the place sly, cunning, and, withal,
triumphant, as if he had accomplished, that day, through securing the
small stones, some secret thing of a great import. His countenance, as,
at length, he went away, was not triumphant but half terrified. It was
as if some long-forgotten scene of horror had been brought before his