The twisting path through Briony Wood had never been traveled at such a speedy pace before. Walden Slater, carrying Deborah in his arms much as he might carry a small baby, maintained his dog-trot over the hummocky path, through puddles, across deceptive roots. As Dreeme, close behind him, running, too, in his bare feet, observed the square back of the farmer, a back against which the water-soaked shirt clung tightly and so revealed the contours of the great sliding back-muscles much as a skin might, a feeling of wonder and intense indebtedness crept over him. He had never known Walden Slater but now he knew him, knew him for a determined and relentless machine bent on justice. He had seen him in previous years bowed by the killing toil of his stony acres, eating gluttonously at table, sagging in his creaking rocker on the back porch, always silent, always (now that he came to think of it) self-contained. The young doctor’s mind swept back over the past few days. Walden Slater eating cabbage. Walden Slater rocking in the darkness. Walden Slater finding words with difficulty, announcing that Deborah might stay with him as long as she pleased. Dreeme knew now that this statement was a secret challenge to Westcott and Burroughs. Walden Slater whittling on the back porch, asking the preacher for a knife. The knife was dull. How easily he had achieved this bit of detective acumen. Walden Slater thinking, reaching conclusions in that slow dogged mind that was, after all, so far from stupidity. Walden Slater watching night after night, keeping guard under the bright moon. Walden Slater like an enormous hound on the scent. Walden Slater rising like justice with the smoking gun in his hand. The figure of the farmer grew to colossal dimensions in the young doctor’s estimation.

All this while they were hurrying through Briony Wood, hurrying through trees that were no longer malevolent spectres of a diseased fancy but merely slender birches and pines. Though the branches whipped across his face, though he stumbled into muddy hollows, though sharp thorns tore at his soiled and soaking garments, Dreeme no longer experienced that instinctive fear that had haunted him so short a time before. His body was emptied of fright. It was almost emptied of exertion as well for a growing hollowness within him, a tightening at the pit of his stomach, a painful numbness in his legs informed him that he was approaching the end of his endurance. Still, an implacable nervous energy pushed him forward, a febrile comprehension of one more important thing to be done. He knew what it was but he did not permit his mind to dwell upon it too fiercely. After all, what had he to do with the peculiar ideas of justice in the valley. He had seen what could be accomplished by established authority during the day following the murder of Wagner. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There had been evasion, then, a deliberate slowness, a maddening deflection of proper proceedings. But this time it would be different. Justice would secure its own and would even the balance. He hurried on at the heels of Walden Slater serious but determined. He could see the loose hair of Deborah resting against the stout shoulder of the farmer and the sight of it filled him with a vast pity. It would be justice accomplished for her sake so far as he was concerned. She, the innocent victim, would be furiously avenged. Walden Slater might have the future of the whole valley in his thoughts, its complete release from an evil domination, but the safety of Deborah was enough for him to think about. There was only one way in which to fight madness.

They were at the height of Briony Wood now and the soughing wind was a cold lance against their faces. It was remarkable how swiftly they had proceeded on their return journey. The way to Dagon had seemed much longer. As they pressed forward the heavens seemed to split apart like two halves of a dark shell and out of the break sprang the moon like a great white seed. A milky light flooded the black shining leaves and the tall thin tree-trunks. It was like a miracle, a glittering phenomenon that translated the dripping environment into a place of mingled silver and tossed diamonds. There had been a moon like this when he had held Deborah’s slight figure close against him and understood that she was an absolute part of his life. He had walked home that night from Humphrey Lathrop’s cottage and phantoms had walked on either side of him. One of them had said: “I had a very good lawyer, Mr. Stopes.” He had forgotten what the other phantom said. It did not exist any longer. It had been a world of glittering jewelry. It was marvelous, the way in which the earth changed. It was the slave of imagination, the willing Genie that brought whatsoever the dreamer desired. Though he was surrounded by trees and following a path that permitted no view of the country on either side he yet experienced the sensation that he was on a sort of Mount of Vision, that everything was being made clear to him here without words, that the answers to all he had been asking were in the sparkling moonlight and among the dark wet green leaves of the trees. He felt immeasurably grown in spiritual dimensions, enlarged so that he might contain all the love and wonder that abounded in the world. The uneven stones cut his feet but he was oblivious of them. Malicious branches lashed across his face like small whips but he laughed to himself as he thrust them aside. It was all right now.

The path turned and slanted downward and he understood that they were on the final stretch that led into Jeffrey Westcott’s land. The name sprang back into his intelligence ominously and his lips tightened at the thought. There was still justice to be accomplished. Glancing back, he wondered vaguely what had become of the score of farmers who had gathered about the Devil Stone in that hollow which he should never see again. What justice could there be for those deluded men? He strove to remember what had actually happened but all he could recollect was the report of a gun, the log-like fall of Burroughs, and his own mad rush when he had snatched Deborah up from the stone and darted into the bushes with her. A vague idea of scattered running forms lingered in the back of his consciousness but he could not verify it by any reasoning. Had those men fled into the swamp or were they now slowly returning along the path which Walden Slater and he had followed? Were they, even now, lurking among the trees to the rearward of him, watching him with fanatic eyes, planning among themselves some secret onslaught? He could not tell and he did not care. He knew that the head of the serpent had been crushed in the Reverend George Burroughs and that the heart of the serpent would be stilled when justice was accomplished on Jeffrey Westcott. After that, the blind body could do what it desired. He understood that the frenzied farmers had been controlled by a malicious power of will and that when that will was destroyed there would be, as Walden Slater had said, “Nothing to fight about.” Comforted by this thought, he plodded on, Walden Slater’s dog-trot having dwindled to a fast walk on the downward grade.

The last stretch of woods passed swiftly and as the path turned and they faced the thinning trees Dreeme became aware of a reddish glow that lit up the heavens before him. It was not the light of the moon for that great white miracle hung directly above his head in the wide cleft of the split storm-cloud. It was something else, something that glowed upward from the ground, and as they burst through the final fringe of bushes into Westcott’s back meadow, he saw that the mysterious farm-house was a mass of high leaping flames. At the same instant Walden Slater started forward in a run and the young doctor, accelerating his pace, followed closely at his heels. As he ran his mind automatically snapped back to a lighted lamp with a protector and a flying end of curtain that ever blew closer and closer to that lamp. Had they put that lamp out? He knew that they had done nothing of the sort, that, in their hurry, they had left it burning just as they had left the window open regardless of the wind that puffed the curtain inward. His first thought was one of relief that the farm-house, a hive of malevolence, was burning up with its books, its sacrilegious altar, and its memories. The lair of the serpent was destroyed. Then he remembered the purpose that brought them back here. Where would Jeffrey Westcott be? Would he hide in the swamp while his years of evil knowledge went up in thick smoke and spurting flame? Walden Slater shifted Deborah from one shoulder to the other and ran all the faster.