CHAPTER XXXIX

WHICH IS A CHAPTER OF ACTION Dallas trudged homewards despairing, for Hope, that bright angel was dead, his life wrecked, his future a grim horror; even the memory of Josepha was an agony, her undying faith no more now than a loving woman’s unreasoning prejudice. He was guilty beyond all possibility of doubt, and come what might, shame, prison, death itself—nothing mattered any more. It was as he turned in amid the dense shade of trees fumbling for the stile, for there was no ray of moon or star, that the shadowy e…