CHAPTER XVII.
RACHEL LAKE SEES WONDERFUL THINGS BY MOON-
LIGHT FROM HER WINDOW.
Though Rachel was unfit for letter-writing, she was
still more unfit for slumber. She leaned her temple on
her hand, and her rich light hair half covered her fingers,
and her amazing interview with Dorcas was again present
with her, and the same feeling of bewilderment.
It was late now, not far from one o'clock, and around
her the terrible silence of a still night. All those small
sounds lost in the hum of mid-day life now came into
relief — a ticking in the wainscot, a crack now and then in
the joining of the furniture, and occasionally the tap of a
moth against the window pane from outside, sounds sharp
and odd, which made her wish the stillness of the night
were not so intense.
As from her little table she looked listlessly through the
window, she saw against the faint glow of the moonlight,
the figure of a man who seized the paling and vaulted
into the flower garden, and with a few swift, stumbling
strides over the flower-beds, reached the window, and
placing his pale face close to the glass, she saw his eyes
glittering through it; he tapped — or rather beat on the
pane with his fingers — and at the same time he said, re-
peatedly: "Let me in; let me in."
Her first impression, when she saw this person cross
the little fence at the road-side was, that Mark Wylder
was the man. But she was mistaken; the face and figure
were Stanley Lake's.
She would have screamed in the extremity of her terror,