Cass Ledyard struggled to his feet. He was just barely able to breathe but he did not seem to bear any resentment toward Stark Laurier. For the mistake in the blackness they were equally to blame. But his usually pale face was a sickly green, as if he were a plague-sufferer, and his eyes seemed bursting from their sockets.
"What is the matter?" gasped Nona.
As she spoke, Cass Ledyard rushed across the room in a panic. The door of the adjoining room, the room which he had forbidden Stark Laurier to enter, was open. When Stark Laurier and Nona followed Cass Ledyard, they beheld him standing before an empty mantelpiece.
"It's gone!" he shrieked. "It's gone!"
He clutched paralytically at the air.
"The Golden Buddha is stolen!"
"Perhaps," hazarded Stark Laurier, "you will recover it in time."
Cass Ledyard's face as he turned upon him was horrible to behold. His mouth worked convulsively and he was drooling at the lips. There was no accounting for the hatred and fury of his expression.
"Fool!" he rasped. "Fool!"
Then he burst into delirious laughter.
"I have lived ten years for this moment," he raged, "and now you speak of recovery."
He seized a huge cane.
"Get out of my house!" he screamed, as he brandished the heavy knotted stick above Stark Laurier's head. "Get out of my house, you fool!"
Stark was speechless with astonishment at the turn which events had taken. Nona took his arm.
"Father is not himself," she pleaded; "please go."
As if in a dream, Stark Laurier permitted
himself to be led unresisting
to the door. Nona pressed
her cold lips to his. The next moment
she was gone and the door of "The
Castle" had been barricaded against
him.
The night was intensely dark. Against the reflected sheen of the blood-burning moon the trees stood out in jagged silhouette. The forest trails were very damp. Stray bits of mist, illuminated, white-glowing, moved stealthily about as if they were lost spirits searching for bodies to enter. The distant, feeble dripping of a mountain stream floated to his ears so monotonously that eventually it seemed to grow to drum-pitch. The thickets seemed filled with subdued voices, as if all the woodfolk were deep in conversation. Stark leaned against a tree. He shivered. The intense cold of the night air was as cutting as a meat-cleaver. It dug to his very bones. The fact that he was hatless served to increase his general discomfort. His head was in a whirl. He could not find his way down the perilous mountain paths in the darkness. But even if he had been able, he could not leave Nona to the mercy of all the unexplainable mysteries of Black Hill. At any moment she might call to him for help. So he sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree not twenty feet from "The Castle". Now all the lights were out and it looked as grim and ghostlike as a tomb.
The ensuing hours seemed endless. The coldness increased. The night dew fell from the leaves above his head like chips of ice. Once something crawled across his foot. He imagined it was only a hallucination. But when he put his hand down and felt his shoe it was slimy. Never once did he close his eyes. In his misery sleep was impossible, nor did he wish to sleep. He waited intently, his ears strained for the slightest cry, but none came. The silence was unbroken, if a
