CHAPTER XLIII.
TS WHICH OLD TAMAR LIFTS UP HER VOICE IN PRO-
PHECY.
Certainly Stanley Lake was right about Redman's
Dell. Once the sun had gone down behind the distant
hills, it was the darkest, the most silent and the most sol-
itary of nooks.
It was not, indeed, quite dark yet. The upper sky had
still a faint grey twilight halo, and the stars looked wan
and faint. But the narrow walk that turned from Red-
man's Dell was always dark in Stanley's memory; and
Sadducees are no more proof than other men against the
resurrections of memory and the penalties of association
and of fear.
Captain Lake had many things to think of. Some
pleasant enough as he measured pleasure, others trouble-
some. But as he mounted the stone steps that conducted
the passenger up the steep acclivity to the upper level of
the dark and narrow walk he was pursuing, one black
sorrow met him and blotted out all the rest.
Captain Lake knew very well and gracefully practised
the art of not seeing inconvenient acquaintances in the
street. But here in this narrow way there met him full
a hated shadow whom he would fain have " cut," by look-
ing to right or left, or up or down, but which was not to
bo evaded — would not only have his salutation but his
arm, and walked — a horror of great darkness, by his
side — through this solitude.
The young Captain stood for a moment still on reaching