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SON OF THE WIND

darkness, was mounting up the steps, slowly, as if encumbered with a cloak. Rader had moved forward. Carron could see his, bent head and his extended hand. A hand was reached out of the shadow, and, for a moment, in the narrow beam of light appeared an arm, long, bare almost to the shoulder, and so shapely, so suggestive of dimples, and, against the black shadows around it, so white that for an instant thought deserted him. An arm, without a clear seen body, suddenly thrust upon him from darkness—a woman's arm where he had expected a man's face! "What in the world!" Carron muttered softly, holding his breath with doubt of what was to follow. "What the devil!" he ended.. For Rader suddenly raised the lamp, the arm disappeared in a fold of darkness, the whole form, still unseen, passed and disappeared under the piazza roof, and Carron's eyes, following down the beam of light, discovered at the end of it the figure of a man standing upon the lowest step looking up at Rader, the unexpected and rather amazing sight of "the man on the road."

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