Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/250

 the familiar room. There lay her apron as she had left it, thrown over a chair. He had the little blue garment, which still showed the impress of a rounded shoulder, in his arms in an instant, and kissed it passionately.

Now that he was so near her, he could not go away without looking upon her face. The hunger in him for sight and sound and touch of her was stronger than aught beside. He would wait, and while waiting he would sleep a little; it was early yet, and he was passing weary. There was no couch in the room, and he stretched himself upon a tiger-skin on the floor, and was asleep ere he could have counted six of his own heartbeats.

As he slept, a strange dream came to him. He was aware of a creature bending over him, at once as beautiful and as deadly as the tiger on whose skin he lay. Through his heavily closed lids the malignant light of two strange red-brown eyes seemed to burn into his brain, a warm breath passed over his face. He stirred in his sleep and tried to open his eyes. In vain! A voice low and musical as the murmur of his forest pine-trees chanted words whose sound alone reached him in the distant sleep-world: "And the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children. Do you hear me? It is not I who do this thing, but the avenger.