The door opened and the two overseers appeared with Landless, who advanced and stood, silent and collected, before the ring of hostile faces.

"What is your name, sirrah?" said the Governor, throwing himself into his chair and frowning heavily.

"Godfrey Landless."

"I am told that you are son to one Warham Landless, a so-called colonel in the rebel army and hand in glove with the usurper himself."

"I am the son of Colonel Warham Landless of the forces of the Commonwealth, and friend to his Highness the Lord Protector."

"Humph! And did you fight in these same forces yourself?"

"At Worcester, yes."

"Humph! the son of a traitor and rebel—traitor and rebel yourself—and convict to boot! A pretty record! On what day was this rising to occur?"

No answer. The Governor repeated the question. "On what day was this precious mine to be sprung? And to what place were you to resort?"

Landless remaining silent, the Governor's face began to flush and the veins in his forehead to swell. "Have you lost your tongue?" he said fiercely. "If so, we will find a way to recover it."

"I shall not answer those questions," said Landless firmly.

"It is your one chance for life," said the Governor sternly. "Answer me truly, and you may escape the gallows. Refuse, and you hang, so surely as I sit here."

"I shall not answer them."

"Sink me if I ever knew a Roundhead so careless of his own interests," drawled Sir Charles. The Governor whispered to the master of the plantation, then turned again to the prisoner.

"I give you one more chance," he said harshly. "When is this day? Where is this place?"

"I shall not tell you."

"We will see about that," said his Excellency with compressed lips. "Verney, send your daughter from the room. Woodson, you understand this gear, having been in the Indies. This man is to tell us all that he knows of this business. Call in a trustworthy slave or two to help you."

Patricia uttered a low cry, and the Surveyor-General crushed the flower between his fingers and turned upon the Governor. "Your Excellency! I protest! This that you would do is not lawful! Surely such harsh measures are not needed."

The Governor's fury exploded. "Not needful!" he exclaimed in a high voice. "Not needful, when upon these questions hang the fortunes of the Colony! when if we fail, to-morrow may usher in a blacker forty-four! And not lawful! I am the law in this. State, Major Carrington; I am the King's representative, and this is my prerogative! and I say that by fair means or foul this information must be gained. This is no time to prate of humanity. We are to show humanity to ourselves; we are to stamp out this lit fuse. Or does Major Carrington wish it to burn on?"

"No," said Carrington coldly. "I spoke hastily. You are right, of course, and I will interfere no further."

An hour later Patricia stood before the hall window looking out upon the dazzling water and the green velvet of the marshes with wide, unseeing eyes. Her hands were clenched at her sides and upon each cheek burned a crimson spot. Beside her crouched Betty Carrington who, upon the first rumor of trouble at Verney Manor, had ridden over from Rosemead. Their strained ears caught no sound from the room opposite other than the occasional sound of the Governor's voice, raised in interrogation. There came no answering voice. Patricia stood motionless, with eyes that never wandered from the rich scene without, and with lips pressed together, but Betty hid her face in the other's skirts and shivered. The door of the master's room opened and both started violently. The overseer strode down the hall and had laid his hand upon the latch of the door leading to the offices, when his mistress called him to her. "Do they know? Has the man told?" she asked with an effort.

Woodson shook his head. "He's as dumb as an oyster. Might as well try to get anything from an Indian. They're going to try t' other—Trail."

He left the hall, but was back in five minutes' time with the forger. They entered the master's room, and Patricia, seized by a sudden impulse, followed them, leaving Betty trembling in the window seat.

Unnoted by all but one of the company, she slipt to a seat in the shadow of her father's burly shoulders. He was leaning forward, talking to the Governor, who sat very erect, his features fixed in an expression of dogged determination. The Surveyor-General sat well behind the table, and upon the polished wood before him lay a little heap of torn petals and broken stems. At the far end of the room and leaning heavily against the wall was the prisoner whose examination was just finished.

Sir Charles had seen the entrance of the lady of the manor, and he now rose from his seat and came to her. "Not a syllable," he whispered in answer to the question in her eyes. "Roundhead obstinacy! But I think that this fellow will prove more malleable."

His prediction was verified. Ten minutes later the Governor rose to his feet triumphant. "So!" he said, drawing a long breath. "We are, I think, gentlemen, at the very core at last. The time, day after to-morrow; the place, Poplar Spring in this county. And now to work! Those of these d—d Oliverians whom we can reach must be arrested at once. Swift messengers must be sent to all plantations far and near. The trainbands must be called out. Time presses, gentlemen!"

"And these men?" said the Colonel.

"Must go to Jamestown gaol, where the one shall hang as surely as my name is William Berkeley. For the other—"

"Your Excellency has promised me my life," said Trail cringingly, but with an inscrutable something that was not fear in his sinister green eyes.

"An escort must be gotten together," said the Colonel, "and the day is far advanced. I advise keeping them here until the morning."

"See that you keep them straitly then," said the Governor.

"Trust me for that, your Excellency," said the overseer grimly.

"Then to work, gentlemen," cried the Governor, "for there is much to do and but little time to do it in. Major Carrington, you with Mr. Peyton will ride with me to Jamestown. Colonel Verney, you will know what measures to take for the safety of your shire. Woodson, have the horses brought around at once."

The Council broke up in haste and confusion, and its members, talking eagerly, streamed into the hall. Carrington was the last in line, and he paused before Landless. The under overseer and the slave Regulus were at a little distance replacing the cords about Trail's arms. The Surveyor-General cast a quick glance towards the door, saw that the last retreating figure was that of Mr. Peyton, and approached his lips close to Landless's ear.

"You are a brave man," he said in a low and troubled voice. "From my soul I honor you! I would have saved you, would save you now if I could. But I am cruelly placed."

"I have no hope for this life—and no fear," said Landless calmly.

Carrington paused irresolute, and a flush rose to his face. "I would like to hear you say that you do not blame me," he said at last with an effort.

"I do not blame you," said Landless.

Woodson appeared in the doorway. "The Governor is waiting, Major Carrington."

"If I can do ought to help you, I will," said Carrington hastily, and left the room. A moment later came the jingling of reins and the sound of rapid hoofs quickening into the planter's pace as the Governor and the Surveyor-General whirled away.



CHAPTER XXIV

A MESSAGE

In an unused attic room of the great house lay Godfrey Landless, cords about his ankles, and his arms bound to his sides by cords and by a thick rope, one end of which was fastened to a beam on the wall. He was alone, for the Muggletonian, Havisham and Trail were confined in the overseer's house. Opposite him was a small window framing a square of sky. He had watched light clouds drift across it, and the sun pass slowly and majestically down it, and the sunset turn the clouds into floating blood-red plumes. He had been there since noon. Thick walls kept from him all sound in the house below—it might have been a house of the dead. Through the closed window came the low, incessant hum of the summer world without, but no unusual noise. He had heard the sunset horn, and the song of the slaves coming from the fields, and as dusk began to fall, the cry of a whip-poor-will.

When the door had closed upon the retreating figures of the men who brought him there, he had thrown himself upon the floor where he lay, faint from physical anguish, in a stupor of misery, conscious only of a sick longing for death. This mood had passed and he was himself again.

As he lay with his eyes following the fiery, shifting feathers of cloud, he remembered that the gaol at Jamestown faced the south, and he thought, "This is the last sunset I shall ever see." He had the strong abiding faith of his time and party, and he looked beyond the clouds with an awe and a light in his eyes. Verses learnt at his mother's knee came back to him; he said them over to himself, and the tender, solemn, beneficent words fell like balm upon his troubled heart. He thought of his mother who had died young, and then of scenes and occurrences of his childhood. All earthly hope was past, there could be no more struggling; in a little while he would be dead. Dying, his mind reverted, not to the sordid misery from which death would set him free, but to the long past, to the child at the mother's knee, to the boy who had climbed down great cliffs in search of a smuggler's cave. The unearthly light that rests upon that time so far behind us shone strong for him—he saw every twig in the rooks' nests in the lofty elms, every ivy leaf about a ruined oriel, black against a gold sky; the cool, dark smell of the box alleys filled his nostrils; the sound of the sea came to him; he heard his mother singing on the terrace. He bowed his face with a sudden rain of tender, not sorrowful, tears.

Something crashed in at the window, splintering the coarse glass and falling upon the floor at a little distance from him. It was a large pebble, to which was tied a piece of paper. He started up and made for it, to be brought up within two feet of it by the tug of the rope which bound him to the wall. He thought a moment, then lay down upon the floor and found that he could touch the end of the string that tied the paper to the pebble. He took it between his teeth and slowly drew it towards him, then, rising to his knees, he strained with all his might at the cords that bound his arms. They were tightly drawn, but when at length he desisted, panting, he had so loosened them that he could move one hand a very little way. With it and with his teeth he disengaged the paper from the pebble and spread it upon his knee. There was just light enough to read the sprawling schoolboy hand with which it was covered. It ran thus:—

"I don't know as this will ever reach you. I am doing all I can. Luiz Sebastian has not let me get at arm's length from him since I overheard him and the Turk, and a sailor from Captain Laramore's ship and Roach at the hut on the marsh, two hours ago. They would have killed me there, but I ran, and he did not catch me until I was almost to the quarters. He will kill me though in a little while, I know; he has a knife and he is sitting on the doorstep, and the Turk is with him, and I can not pass them. He held his hand over my mouth and the knife to my heart when Woodson went the rounds, and I couldn't make no sound—Lord have mercy upon me! I write this with my blood, on a leaf from your Bible, while he sits there whispering to the Turk. He goes to his own cabin directly and he will take me with him and kill me there, I know he will. He goes to the stables first and I must go with him. If we pass close enough, and if I can do it without his seeing me I will throw this in at the window of the room where I know you are, if not—the Lord help us all!... Landless, for God's sake! before moonrise to-night the Chickahominies and the Ricahecrians from the Blue Mountains will come down on the plantation. With them are leagued Luiz Sebastian, the Turk, Trail, Roach, and most of the slaves.... When all is over, the Indians will take the scalps and Grey Wolf and will make for the Blue Mountains; Luiz Sebastian and the others will seize the boats and put off for the ship at the Point. Her crew will give her up and they will all turn pirate together. The women go with them if they can keep them from the Indians; the men are all to be killed.... I have told you all I heard. For God's sake, save them if you can,—and remember poor Dick Whittington."

Dropping the paper, Landless strained with all his might, first at the cords which bound his arms, and then at the rope which fastened him to the wall. Again and again he put forth the strength of despair—his muscles cracked, great beads stood upon his forehead—but the ropes held. As well as he could with his shackled feet he stamped upon the floor; he called aloud, but there came no answering voice or sound from below. He was at the end of the house over unused chambers, and the walls and flooring were very thick. He clenched his teeth and began again the battle with the cords which held him. All in vain. He shouted until he was hoarse—it was crying aloud in a desert. With a groan he leaned against the wall, gathering strength for another effort. It was dark now and the moon rose at eleven.... There was a piece of glass upon the floor, one of the splinters from the shattered window. He remembered noticing it—a long narrow piece like the blade of a knife. Sinking to his knees he felt for it, and after a long time found it. He now had a knife, but he could not move the hand that held it six inches from his side. Stooping, he took the splinter between his teeth, and making the rope taut, drew the sharp edge of the glass across it. Again and again he drew it across, and at length he perceived that a strand was severed. With a thrill of joy he settled to the slow, laborious and painful task. Time passed, a long, long time, and yet the rope was but half severed. As he worked he counted the moments with feverish dread, his heart throbbed one passionate prayer: "Lord, let me save her!" Now and then he glanced at the blackness of the night outside with a terrible fear—though he knew it could not be yet—that he should see it waver into moonlight. Another interval of toil, and he stood erect, gathered his forces, made one supreme effort—and was free! There was not time for the cords about his arms, but he must get rid of those which fettered his ankles. An endless task it seemed, but hand and friendly splinter accomplished it at last; and he sprang to the door. It was locked. He dashed himself against it, once, twice, thrice, and it crashed outwards, precipitating him into a large, bare room. He crossed this, managed to open its unlocked door with his free hand, descended a winding stair and came into the upper hall. It was in darkness, but up the wide staircase streamed the perfumed light of many myrtle candles, and with it laughter, and the sound of a man's voice singing to a lute.



CHAPTER XXV

THE ROAD TO PARADISE

The family and guests of Verney Manor were assembled in the great room. The day had been one of confusion, haste and anxiety; but it was past, and the stillness and forced inaction of the night was upon them. With the readiness of those to whom danger is no novelty they seized the hour and made the most of it. Sufficient unto the morrow was the evil thereof.

The Colonel, weary from hard riding, but well satisfied with his afternoon's work, had sunk into a great chair and challenged Dr. Anthony Nash to a game of chess. "Everything is in train," he told them, "and all quiet upon the plantations in this shire at least. I believe the danger past. God be thanked!" Upon a settle piled with cushions lay Captain Laramore, with a bandaged shoulder, a long pipe between his teeth, and at his elbow a tankard of sack and an elderly Hebe in the person of Mistress Lettice Verney. Patricia, sumptuously clad and beautiful as a dream, sat in the great window with Betty and Sir Charles. Her eyes shone with a feverish brilliancy, her white hands were never still, she laughed and jested with her lover, touching this or that with light wit. Once or twice she broke into song, rich, passionate, throbbing through the night. The gentle Betty looked at her in wonder, but Sir Charles was enchanted.

Steps sounded on the stairs and in the hall. "Who is that?" cried the master, taking his hand from his rook.

"The overseer, probably," said Dr. Nash. "Check to your king."

A loud scream from Mistress Lettice. The master leaped to his feet, knocking over the chess-table and sending the pieces rattling into corners. Sir Charles, drawing his rapier, sprang to his side, the wounded Captain started up from amidst his pillows and the divine snatched a brass andiron from the fireplace.

Framed in the doorway, looking larger than life against the blackness of the space behind him, stood the arch plotter, the Roundhead, the convict, the rebellious servant whom the Governor had sworn to hang. Blood dropped from his face, cut by the glass with which he had severed the rope, to meet the blood upon his arms and chest, lacerated by his savage straining at his bonds. For a moment he stood, blinded by the light, then advanced into the room. His master seized him. "Still bound!" he cried with an oath. "He is alone then! How did you get here? What are you doing here? Speak, scoundrel!"

"I bring you this paper, sir," said Landless hoarsely. "Will you take it from me. I cannot raise my hands."

The Colonel snatched the paper, glanced at it, read it with a face from which all the ruddy color had fled, and held it out to Sir Charles with a shaking hand. "Read it," he gasped. "Read it aloud," and sank into his chair breathing heavily.

Sir Charles read. "Damnation!" he cried, crushing the paper in his hand. Laramore started up with a roar of "My ship!" and then broke into a torrent of oaths. Mistress Lettice's screams filled the room until her brother roughly silenced her by clapping his hand over her mouth. "By the Lord Harry, Lettice, I will throw you out to them if you do not hush! Gentlemen, in God's name, what are we to do?"

"Barricade door and window and hold the house against them," said the baronet.

"Send for help to Rosemead and to Fitzhugh and Ludwell!" cried the divine.

"Five men and three women to hold this house against a hundred Indians and negroes! And no help could come for hours and it is now nearly ten! Moreover, the messenger would have to pass through the savages lying in the woods,—he would never reach Rosemead with his scalp on!"

"I will be your messenger," said Nash rising, "and as every moment is more precious than rubies, I had best start at once."

"You, Anthony! God forbid!" cried the Colonel "You would go to certain death."

"I would stay to certain death, would I not?" retorted the other. "But my mare, Pixie, and I can shew clean heels to the red villains, were they as thick as chinquepins. Give me the stable-key, Verney. I know the way to the jade's stall, and she will follow her master through fire and water without a whinny. I don't want a light. Not a soul on the place must know that I have left Verney Manor."

"Anthony, Anthony, I am loth to see you go, old friend!" cried the Colonel.

"Tut, tut, as well leave my scalp in the woods as in Dick Verney's parlor! but I shall do neither. Hold the house as long as you can, and look for Carrington, and Fitzhugh, and Ludwell, and myself with a hundred men at our heels before the dawn. Until then vale."

He was gone. "And now the doors and windows," said Sir Charles.

"The windows, save those in this room, are secured as they always are at night. The shutters are heavy and strongly barred, and we have but to draw the chains across the doors. They will find it hard work to fire the house, for the logs are wet from this morning's shower. There is ammunition enough, and the shutters are loopholed. If we were in force, we might hold out, but, my God! what can we do? Even with the overseers whom we must manage to call to us, if we can do so without arousing suspicion, we are not enough to defend one face of the house."

"Are there no honest servants?"

"How can I tell the true men from the knaves? To rouse the quarters would be to show that we know, and to ourselves spring the mine which is to destroy us. And if we brought men into the house, who are leagued with the fiends outside, then would their work be done for them. There are a very few whom I know to be faithful, but how to secure them without giving the alarm—my God! how helpless we are!"

"Perhaps I can help you, Colonel Verney," said Landless.

In the midst of a dead silence the eyes of each occupant of the room,—the master, the courtier, the wounded captain, the women, trembling in each other's arms,—were turned upon the speaker who stood before them, haggard, torn and bleeding, but with a quiet power in his dark face and steadfast eyes.

"You?" said the master sternly, "What can you do?"

"I will tell you," said Landless, "but I must be freed from these bonds first."

Another pause, and then Sir Charles, responding to a nod from his kinsman, walked over to Landless, and with his rapier cut the ropes which bound him.

"Now speak!" said the Colonel.

* * * * * *

The quarters lay, to all appearance, wrapt in the profoundest slumber—no movement in the low-browed cabins, or in the lane or square; no sound other than the croak of the frogs in the marshes, the wail of the whip-poor-wills, and the sighing of the night wind in the pines. All was dark save in the east, where the low stars were beginning to pale. Below them glowed a dull red spark, shining dimly across a long expanse of black marsh and water, and coming from Captain Laramore's ship, anchored off the Point.

One moment it seemed the only light in the wide landscape of darkness; the next the flame of a torch, streaming sidewise in the wind, cast an orange glare upon the dead tree in the centre of the square and upon the windowless fronts of the cabins surrounding it. The torch was in the hand of the overseer, who went the rounds, striking upon each door, and summoning the inmates of the cabin to the square. "The master wants a word with you," was all the answer he vouchsafed to startled, sullen, or suspicious inquiries. In five minutes the square was thronged. White and black, servant and slave, rustic, convict, Jew, Turk, Indian, mulatto, quadroon, coal black, untamed African—the motley crowd pressed and jostled towards that end of the square at which stood the master, his kinsman, the overseer, and Godfrey Landless. Behind them on the steps of the overseer's house were the Muggletonian, Havisham, and Trail. They had been unbound. In the Muggletonian's scarred face was stolid indifference, but Trail looked furtively about until he spied Luiz Sebastian, when he signaled "What is it?" with his eyes. The mulatto shook his head, and continued to shoulder his way through the press until he stood in the front row, face to face with the party from the great house. On one side of him was the Turk, on the other an Indian.

The master stepped a pace or two in front of his companions, and held up his hand for silence. When the excited muttering had sunk into a breathless hush, he beckoned to Landless, and the young man stepped to his side. There were many streaming lights by now, and men saw each other, now clearly, now darkly, as the fitful glare rose and fell.

"Now, my man," said the master in a loud, slow voice, "you will point out to me, as you have agreed to do, every man concerned in the plot discovered this morning. And you whom he designates, I command you, in the name of the King, to surrender peaceably. Your hope of pardon depends upon your doing so. Now, Landless!"

"John Havisham," said Landless.

"Taken redhanded," quoth the master. "Place him here, Woodson, in front of us. When all are in line, I shall have a word to say to them."

Havisham advanced with quiet dignity, passing Landless as if unaware of his presence. "I surrender," he said, raising his voice, "because I have no choice. And I advise those of our number here present to do the same. Our plans known, our friends taken, betrayed and deserted by the man in whom we trusted most, whom we called our leader, we have, indeed, no choice."

"Win-Grace Porringer," said Landless.

The Muggletonian threw up his arms. "Iscariot!" he cried wildly. "Woe, woe to him by whom offenses come! Well for thee, son of Warham Landless, hadst thou never been born! By the power given to the Two Witnesses and to their followers I curse thee! Thou shalt be anathema maranatha! Famine, thirst, and a violent death be thy portion in this life, and in the world to come mayest thou burn forever, howling! Amen and amen!" With a wild laugh he stalked to the side of Havisham, leaving Trail standing alone upon the doorstep. The eyes of the forger met the eyes of Luiz Sebastian in another puzzled inquiry, but the latter shook his head with a frown. Not doubting that his name would be the next called, Trail had already taken a step forward, but Landless's eyes passed him over, and rested upon the face of a man standing near Luiz Sebastian.

"John Robert!" he cried.

The man, a Baptist preacher suffering under the Act of Uniformity, turned a gentle, reproachful face upon him, and stepping from the crowd, joined himself to Havisham and the Muggletonian.

"James Holt!" said Landless.

A rustic, standing behind Luiz Sebastian, uttered a dreadful imprecation. "You may hang me and welcome, your Honor," he cried as he took his place, "if you'll just let me see this d—d Judas hung first!"

Luiz Sebastian fixed his great eyes upon Landless. "If he calls my name," said the wicked brain behind the blandly smiling face, "shall I, or shall I not—? It is many minutes to moonrise yet."

But Landless did not call him. He passed him by as he had passed Trail, and named another rustic at some little distance from the mulatto, then a Fifth Monarchy man, then a veteran of Cromwell's, then the plantation miller and the carpenter, then two more Oliverians, then more peasants. Each man, as his name was called, stepped forward into the lengthening line that faced the master and his party, standing with pistols leveled and cocked; and each man bestowed upon Godfrey Landless a curse, or a look that was bitterer than a curse.

"Humfrey Elder!" called Landless.

The old butler shot from out the crowd, as though impelled from a catapult. "Your Honor!" he screamed, "the man as says I plot against a Verney, lies! I that fought with your Honor at Naseby! I that you brought from home with you when Mistress Patricia was a baby, and that has poured your wine from that day to this! I plot with these rapscallions and Roundheads! Your Honor, he lies in his throat!"

"Fall into line, Humfrey," said his master quietly; "I will hear you out later, but now, obey me."

The watchful eyes of Luiz Sebastian were growing very watchful indeed.

"Regulus!" cried Landless.

Under cover of a burst of protestation from Regulus, the Turk whispered to the mulatto, "By Allah! this is the slave you would not approach! You said he would die for his master."

"He is not of them," returned the other. "St. Jago! if I understand it! But what can it matter? The moon will rise in less than an hour."

"Dick Whittington!" cried Landless.

There was a moment's silence, broken by the mulatto, who had stepped out of line, and now stood facing the party from the great house. "I grieve to say, senors," he said in his silkiest tone, "that the poor Dick was but now taken with the fever, and lies in a stupor within his cabin. To-morrow, perhaps, he will be better, and will answer when you call."

"That is your cabin, just beyond you there, is it not?" demanded Landless.

"Assuredly," with a quick glance. "And what then?"

Landless raised his voice to a shout. "Dick Whittngton!"

"Mother of God! what do you mean?" exclaimed the mulatto. "Your voice cannot reach him, deaf and dumb from the fever, lying in his cabin at the far end of the lane."

"Dick Whittington!" again loudly called Landless.

A cry arose from the crowd behind the mulatto and between him and his cabin. The next instant there broke through them the figure, bound and gagged, of young Dick Whittington. As he rushed past the mulatto, the latter, with a snarl of fury, grappled with him, but animated with the strength of despair, the boy, bound as he was, broke from him and rushed to Landless, at whose feet he dropped in a dead faint. Upon the crowd fell a silence so intense that nature herself seemed to have ceased to breathe. Luiz Sebastian, darting glances here, there, and everywhere, from eyes in which doubt was last growing into certainty, came upon something which told its own tale. The women's cabins were at some distance from the square, and nearer to the great house, and from the one to the other was passing a hurried line of women and children with the under overseer at their head.

With the sight vanished the last remnant of doubt from the mind of the mulatto.... Landless saw that he saw; saw the intention with which he slipped out of range of the pistols; saw the wicked light in his face; saw him beckon to the Indian and point to the forest; saw the glistening and rolling eyeballs and the working lips of the throng of slaves who had by imperceptible degrees separated from the whites, and were now massing together at one side of the square; saw the Turk with a knife in his hand; saw Trail edging away from the group before the overseer's cabin—and sprang forward, his powerful figure instinct with determination, the set calm of the face with which he had met Havisham's quiet disdain and the imprecations of the other conspirators, broken up into fire and passion, high and resolved. Blood was upon it still, and upon his arms and half naked breast; his eyes burned; and as he threw up his arm in a gesture of command, he looked the very genius of war, and he seized and held every eye and ear.

"Men!" he cried, addressing himself to the line he had called into being. "Havisham, Arnold, Allen, Braxton! we fought in the same cause once, fought for God and the Commonwealth! To-night we will fight again, and together; fight for our lives and for the honor of women! Comrades, I am no traitor! I have not sold you! You have cursed me without cause. Listen! Colonel Verney, will you repeat the oath you swore to me an hour ago?"

The master stepped to his side. "I swear," he cried, in his loud, manly voice, "by the faith of a Christian, by the honor of a gentleman, that not one of you whose names have been given by this man, shall in any way suffer by having been privy to this plot. I will so work with the Governor and Council that your bodies shall not be touched, nor your time of service increased. Bygones shall be bygones between us. This applies to all save this man, the head and front of the conspiracy. Him I cannot save. He must pay the penalty, but he shall be the scapegoat for the rest of you. You have my promise, the promise of a man who never breaks his word for good or evil."

"In the woods yonder are Indians," cried Landless. "They wait but for moonrise, for the appointed hour, to fall upon the plantation. You called me traitor! It is Luiz Sebastian and Trail who are the traitors, the betrayers! They are leagued with the Indians and with the slaves. Look at them, and see that I speak truth!"

The look was sufficient. The dusky mass of slaves had swayed forward with one low, deep, bestial growl. Crouched for the spring, they were yet held in leash by the menace of the pistols, leveled upon them and gleaming in the torchlight, and by the restraining gesture and voice of Luiz Sebastian. In the crowd of servants, now quite separated from the slaves, was noise and confusion, and behind the Turk, standing midway between the parties, was forming a phalanx of villainous white faces—the dissolute, the convict, the refuse of the plantation,—and at his side, suddenly as though sprung from the earth, appeared the evil face and red hair of the murderer of Robert Godwyn.

The silence of the Oliverians, stricken dumb by this new turn of affairs, was broken by Havisham's crying to Landless,—

"What are we to do, friend?"

"Make for the house and defend it and our lives," answered Landless, "but first I call upon all true men among you yonder to leave those murderers and join yourselves to us."

"In the name of the King!" cried the Colonel.

"In the name of God!" said Landless.

Some seven or eight broke from the opposite throng and with lowered heads ran to them across the open space. Landless stooped, and lifting the senseless figure at his feet swung it over his shoulder.

"We are ready, Colonel Verney. Steady, men! Follow me!" He turned to the great house, rising vast and dark, two hundred yards away.

A gigantic, coal black Ashantee chief broke from the throng opposite and, uttering his war cry, bounded across the space between them. Another instant and he would have been upon them, and close after him a yelling pack of hell hounds—the overseer's pistol cracked, and the black giant fell dead. A yell arose from the crowd, but they stood irresolute. For firearms, so strictly kept from servants and slaves, so preeminently pertaining to the dominant class, they had a superstitious dread. Four pistols meant four lives picked from the foremost to advance.

"Let them go," cried the mulatto, with a taunting laugh. "Let them go! Let them go cage themselves in wooden walls where we will take them all together—rats in a trap. We will wait for the Chickahominies who have guns, senors, and for the Ricahecrians whose scalping knives are very bright. Until moonrise, senors from the great house, and you others who go with them! Mother of God! look well upon it, for it is the last you will ever see!"

Fifteen minutes later saw the house of Verney Manor garrisoned by some thirty desperate men. They had entered to find a scene of confusion—the hall and lower rooms filled with frightened women and crying children. Patricia with white cheeks and brilliant eyes had come forward to meet her father, carrying a three days' child in her arms. Beyond her was Betty, bending her sweet, pale face over the mother, caught up from her pallet and carried to the house in the arms of the under overseer. Mistress Lettice was alternately wailing that they were all undone and murdered, and wringing her hands over the obstinacy of Captain Laramore who, rapier in left hand, would stand guard at the door, instead of keeping quiet as the Doctor had said he must. The master's stern command for silence reduced the clamor of women and children to an undertone of lamentation. "We must to work at once," he said, "and apportion our forces. There are about thirty men, are there not, Woodson? I shall take the front with ten; Charles, thou shalt have one side, Woodson the other, and Haines the back. Laramore, thou must let us fight for thee, man, though I know thou findest it a bitter pill. Do you marshal the men, Woodson, and divide them into four parties, one for each face, and tell the women to leave off their whimpering and prepare to load the muskets. Haines, have the arms taken down from the racks and distribute them. Men and women, one and all, you are to remember that you are fighting for your lives and for more than your lives. You know what you have to expect if you are taken."

Sir Charles, followed by Landless, the Muggletonian and some three or four others, entered the great room, which, with the master's room, occupied that side of the house allotted to the baronet. The wax candles still burned upon the spinet, and upon the high mantel, and in the middle of the floor lay the overturned chess table. Three of the four windows were closely shuttered, but the fourth was open, and before it stood a graceful figure, looking out into the darkness.

Sir Charles strode hurriedly over to it. "Cousin! this is madness! You know not to what danger you may be exposing yourself. Come away!"

"I am watching for the moonrise," she said dreamily. "It is very near now. Look at the white glow above the water, and how pale the stars are! How beautiful it is, and how cool the wind upon your forehead! Listen! that was the cry of a jay, surely! and yet why should we hear it at night?"

"It is the cry of a jay, sure enough," said the overseer, pausing in his hurried passage through the room, "but it was made by Indian lips."

"Come away, for God's sake!" cried the baronet.

"Look! there is the moon!" she answered.

Above the level of marsh and water appeared a thin line of silver. It thickened, rounded, became a glorious orb. The marshes blanched from black to gray, and across the water, from the dim land to the great silver globe, stretched a long, bright, shimmering path.

A knot of women appeared in the doorway, laden with powder-flasks and platters filled with bullets. One, with only a stick wound with faded flowers in her hand, left them and glided to the open window.

"Margery!" said Patricia softly.

The mad woman, pressing in front of her mistress, looked out into the night and saw the white shining road cutting through the darkness and stretching endlessly away. She threw up her arms with a cry of rapture.

"The road to Paradise! the road to Paradise!"

An arrow whistled through the window and struck into her bosom—into her heart—the staff dropped from her hand, and she swayed forward and fell at her mistress's feet.

The night, so placid, still and beautiful, was rent and in an instant made hideous by a sound so long, loud, and dreadful, that it might have been the shriek of a legion of exultant fiends. It rose to the stars, sunk to the earth and rose again, unearthly, menacing, curdling the blood and turning the heart to stone.

"The war-whoop," said Woodson. "Close the window, quick."



CHAPTER XXVI

NIGHT

That terrible cadence preluded pandemonium, the hush of horror that followed it being broken by one deep and awful roar of voices as the insurgents, red, white, and black, joined forces and swept down upon the devoted house.

"They will try the front first," quoth the master from his loophole. "Steady, men, until I give the word! Now, let them have it with a wannion!"

The muskets cracked and a louder yell arose from without.

"Two," said the master composedly, receiving a fresh musket from his daughter's hand.

"They will try to dash in the door, your Honor!" cried the overseer from his post of observation. "They have the trunk of a pine with them."

"Let them come," said his master grimly. "They will find a warm welcome."

A double line of savages raised the great trunk from the ground and advanced with it at a run, yelling as they came. They had reached the steps leading up into the porch when from the loopholed door and window within there poured a deadly fire. Three fell, but the battering-ram came on and struck against the door with tremendous force. The door held, and but twelve of the twenty who had entered the porch returned to their fellows.

"They won't try that again," said the master with a short laugh.

"They are dividing," cried the overseer. "They will surround the house. Every man to his post!"

Around the corner of the house to the moonlit sward beneath the great room windows swept a tide of Indians and negroes with Luiz Sebastian and the two Ricahecrian brothers at their head. A few of the Indians had guns; the slaves were armed with axes, scythes, knives—the plunder of the tool house—or with jagged pieces of old iron, or with oars taken from the boats and broken into dreadful clubs. They came on with a din that was terrific, the savages from the eastern hemisphere howling like the beasts within their native forests, those from the western uttering at intervals their sterner, more appalling cry.

Within the great room Sir Charles, languidly graceful as ever, stood beside the small square opening in the door that led down into the garden, and fired again and again into the mob without. He fought with an air as became the fine gentleman of the period, but underneath the elaborate carelessness of demeanor was a cool precision of action. The hand that so nonchalantly brushed away the grains of powder from his white ruffles, was steady enough at the trigger; the eye that turned from the red death without to cast languishing glances at his mistress where she stood directing the women, was quick to note the minutest change in savage tactics. He jested as he fought—once he drew a tremulous wail of laughter from Mistress Lettice's lips.

A bullet sung through the aperture and grazed his arm. "The first blood," he said, with a laugh.

"There's a man killed in the master's room and two in the hall!" cried young Whittington, from his post at the far window.

"And Margery," said Patricia, coming forward with the kerchief from her neck in her hand. "Let me bind up your wound, cousin."

He held out his arm with a smile and a few low, caressing words, and she wound the lawn that was not whiter than her face about it; then moved back to where the women worked, loading and passing the muskets to the men who kept up an incessant fire upon the assailants.

The whole house filled with smoke through which the figures of the besieged loomed large and indistinct, and the noise—the crack of the muskets, the loud commands and oaths, the scream of a frightened woman or child, the groans of the wounded, of whom there were now many—became deafening. The attack was now general, and the men on each face had their hands full. Without was horrible clamor, oaths, shots, yells, crashing blows against door and window; within was noise and confusion, and fear, stern and controlled, but blanching the lip of the men and showing in the agony of the women's eyes.

Sir Charles, turning for a fresh musket, after a highly successful shot as the yell outside had testified, found Patricia at his elbow. "There are very few bullets left, cousin, and this is all the powder."

The baronet drew in his breath. "Peste! we are unfortunate! One of you men go beg, borrow, or steal from the others."

Landless left his loophole in charge of the Muggletonian and went swiftly into the hall, where he found the master, his wig off, his shirt torn, his face and hands blackened with powder, now firing with his own hand, now shouting encouragement to the panting men.

"Powder and shot!" he cried. "God help us! are you out? Not a grain or a bullet can we spare, for if we keep them not from the great door we are dead men!"

Landless went to the overseer. "Two more rounds and we are out," said Woodson coolly, firing as he spoke.

"There is no sign that they have had enough," said Landless, as the clamor outside redoubled, and a man fell heavily back from his loophole with a bullet through his brain.

"Enough! Damn them, no!" said the overseer. "When they've had our lives they will have had enough—not before! They're paying dearly for their fun though."

Landless went back to the great room with empty hands.

"They are all in like case," he said, in answer to Sir Charles's lifted eyebrows.

The other shrugged his shoulders. "What will be, will be. If we could have saved our fire—but we had to keep them from the door! Get to your post, and we will hold them back as long as may be. Then a short passage to eternal nothingness!"

"A short passage!" muttered the Muggletonian at Landless's ear. "Well for those who find that at the hands of the uncircumcised heathen. Eternal nothingness! The fool hath said in his heart There is no God—and he is being dashed headlong upon the judgment bar of the God who saith, I will repay. Cursed be the Atheist! May he find the passage, fiery though it be, as nothing to the flames of the avenging God; may he go to his appointed place where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched; may—"

The trunk of a tree was dashed against the door with a force that shook the room. "Dey're comin'!" shouted Regulus, who stood behind Sir Charles, and raised the axe with which he was armed above his head. Another crash and the wood splintered. Through the ragged opening was thrust a red hand—the axe, wielded by Regulus's powerful arms, flashed downwards, and the hand, severed at the wrist, fell with a dull thud upon the floor. A yell from without, and another blow, widening the opening. Landless fired his last bullet into the crowd, and clubbing his musket sprang to the door, in front of which were now massed all the defenders of that side of the house. Sir Charles threw down his useless musket and drew his sword. "Cousin," he said over his shoulder to Patricia, standing white and erect in the midst of the cowering women, "you had best betake yourselves to the hall, and that quickly. This will be no ladies' bower presently."

"Come," said Patricia to the women, and led the way towards the door leading into the hall. As she passed Sir Charles she put out her hand, and he caught it, sunk to his knee, and pressed his lips upon it.

"I am going to my father," she said steadily, "and I shall pray him as he loves me to pass his sword through my heart when they break into the hall. So it is farewell, cousin."

She drew her hand away and moved towards the door, passing Landless so closely that her rich skirts brushed him, but without a change in the white calm of her face. The terrified women had pressed before her into the hall, only Betty Carrington keeping by her side. Her foot was upon the threshold, when with loud screams they surged back into the great room. A thundering crash in the hall was followed by a babel of oaths, screams, triumphant yells. The voice of the master made itself heard above all the hubbub, "Charles, Woodson, Haines, they are upon us! Defend the women to the last, as you are men, all of you!"

The splintered plank between them in the great room and the murderers without was dashed inwards. An Indian, naked, horribly painted, brandishing a tomahawk, sprang through the opening, and Sir Charles ran him through with his sword. A second followed, and Landless dashed his brains out with the butt of his musket. A third, and the Muggletonian struck at him through the wildly flaring light and the drifting smoke wreaths, and missed his aim. The knife of the savage gleamed high in air, then, descending, stuck quivering in the breast of the fanatic. He sunk to his knees, flung up his skeleton arms, and raised his scarred face, into which a light that was not of earth had come, then cried in a loud voice, "Turn ye, turn ye to the Stronghold, ye prisoners of Hope!" His eyes closed and he fell forward upon his face, his blood making the ground slippery about the feet of the others.

Landless closed with the Indian, finally slew him, and turned to behold a stream, impetuous, not to be withstood, of Indians and negroes pouring through the doorway. From the hall came the clash of weapons and a most terrific din, and presently there burst into the great room the Colonel, Laramore, Woodson, and Haines, followed by some fifteen men—making, with the five in the great room, all that were left of the defenders of Verney Manor.



CHAPTER XXVII

MORNING

The women crouched in a far corner of the room behind a barricade of chairs and tables; the men stood between them and the thirsters for blood, and fought coolly, desperately, with such effect that, fearful as were the odds, a glimmering of hope came to them. The ammunition on both sides was exhausted, and it had become a hand to hand struggle in which the advantage of position and weapons was with the assailed.

"Damme, but we will beat them yet!" cried Laramore, panting, and leaning heavily upon his rapier. "They're drawing off; we've tired them out!"

"They'll never tire while that hellhound of an Indian whoops them on and that yellow devil, Luiz Sebastian, backs him up," said the overseer.

"They are gathering for a rush," said Landless.

The assailants had fallen back to the opposite wall, leaving a space, cumbered with the dead and slippery with blood, between them and the defenders of the house. In this space now appeared the lithe figure, and the watchful, large-eyed, amber countenance of Luiz Sebastian.

"Ohe!" he cried, "slaves, all of you! Ashantees, Popoes, Angolans, Fidas, Malimbe, Ambrice! you who are all black! think of the jungle and the village; think of the wives and the children! think of the slaver and the slave ship! You from the Indies, you who are like me, Luiz Sebastian, think of the blood which is the white man's blood and yet the blood of a slave—and hate the white man as I, Luiz Sebastian, hate him! Kill them and take the women!"

The swollen figure and dreadful face of Roach appeared at his side. "Ay!" cried the murderer, with a tremendous oath. "Kill them! Smash them, batter them, hear them scream! In the old man's pocket is the key of his money chest. It is filled with bright yellow gold. Kill him and get the money, and away to turn pirate and get more!"

"It grows late!" cried Trail. "We must up sail, and away before the dawn!"

The gigantic, horribly painted form of the Ricahecrian chief stalked into the open space and commenced a harangue in his own tongue. It was short, but effective.

"God!" said the Colonel, under his breath, and grasped his bloodstained sword more closely.

With one shrill and horrible cry Indians, negroes, mulattoes, and villainous whites were upon them, breaking their line, forcing them apart into knots of two and three away from the frail barrier, behind which cowered the screaming women, striking with knife and tomahawk, axe and club. Two of the Colonel's men fell, one under the knife of the seven-year-captive Ricahecrian, the other beaten down by the jagged and knotted club with which Roach, foaming at the mouth, and swearing horribly, struck madly to left and right. The Ricahecrian, drawing the knife from the heart of his victim, rushed on to where Landless and Sir Charles still maintained, by dint of desperate fighting, their position before the women, but Luiz Sebastian with Roach and half a dozen negroes swept between him and his prey. He swerved aside, and, bounding into the midst of the women, seized the one who chanced to be in his path,—a young and beautiful girl, newly come over from Plymouth, and a favorite with the ladies of Verney Manor. The despairing scream which the poor child uttered rang out above all the tumult. Landless turned, saw, and darted to her aid—but too late. With one hand the savage gathered up the loosened hair, with the other he passed the scalping knife around the young head—when Landless reached them, she who so short time before had been so fair to see, lay a shocking spectacle, writhing in her death agony. With white lips and burning eyes Landless swung his gun above his head, and brought it down upon the shaven crown of Grey Wolf. It cracked like an egg shell, and the Indian dropped across the body of his victim.

Landless, springing back to the post he had quitted, found Sir Charles in desperate case, but as coolly composed as ever, and with the air of the Court still about him despite his bared head and torn and bloodstained clothing, treating those who came against him to an exhibition of swordsmanship such as the New World had probably rarely witnessed. Landless, striking down a cutpurse from Tyburn, saw him run the Turk through, and saw behind him the nightmare visage and the raised club of Roach. He uttered a warning cry, but the club descended, and the handsome, careless face fell backwards, and the slender debonair figure swayed and fell. Landless caught him, saw that he was but stunned, and letting him drop to the floor at his feet, wrenched the sword from his hand, and stood over him, facing Roach with a stern smile.

The murderer raised his club again.

"We've met at last!" he cried with a taunting laugh. "Do you remember the tobacco house, and what I said? I says: 'Every dog has its day, and I'll have mine.' It's my day now!"

"And I said," rejoined Landless, "'I let you go now, but one day I will kill you.' And that day has come."

With an oath Roach brought down the club. Landless swerved, and the blow fell harmlessly; before the arm could be again raised, he caught it, held it with a grasp of steel, and shortened his sword. The miscreant saw his death, and screamed for mercy. "Remember Robert Godwyn!" said Landless, and drove the blade home.

The sword was a more effective weapon than the gun, and with it he kept the enemy at bay, while he glanced despairingly around. There were as many dead as living within the room by this. The floor was piled with the slain; they made traps for the living who in the wild surging to and fro stumbled over them, and fell, and were slain before they could rise. Three fourths of the dead belonged to the insurgents, but the attacked had suffered severely. Of the thirty men with whom the defense had commenced there now remained but twelve, and of that number several were wounded. The Colonel was bleeding from a cut on the head, the under overseer had a ball through his arm, Sir Charles still lay without movement at Landless's feet.

Forced, together with almost all of his party, by the mad rush of the assailants to the further end of the room, the master had seen with agony the women left well-nigh defenseless. Followed by Woodson, Havisham, Regulus, and young Whittington, he had all but cut his way back to them, when a fresh influx from the hall of slaves and whites who had been engaged in plundering the house, drove them apart again.

The newcomers came fresh to the work, maddened, moreover, by the master's wines. They advanced upon the Colonel and his party with drunken shouts, some brandishing rude weapons, others silver salvers and tankards, the spoil of the plate chest. The voice of Luiz Sebastian rang through the room. "Quick work of them, friends; I smell the morning!" With a laugh and a scrap of Spanish song upon his lips he came at Landless with a knife, but a turn of the white man's wrist sent the weapon hurling through the air.

"Curse you!" cried the mulatto, springing out of reach of the deadly point, and holding his arm from which the blood was flowing. "Mother of God! but I will have you yet!" and bounded towards his weapon. Landless, steadily watchful, and pointing that fatal sword this way or that against all comers, cleared for himself and the still senseless man at his feet a circle into which few cared to intrude, for the fame of that blade had gone through the room. "Leave him until we have dealt with the others," said the mulatto between his teeth. "Then will we give him reason to wish that he had never been born."

A touch upon his arm, and Landless turned to find Patricia standing beside him. "Go back," he cried. "Go back!"

"They are murdering them all over there," she said steadily. "My father is dead. I saw him fall."

"Not so, madam. He did but stumble over the dead. See, Woodson fights them back from him. For God's sake, get back behind the barricade!"

She shook her head. "He is dead. They will all be dead directly, my cousin and all. My father cannot help me, and he who lies here cannot help me. I will not be taken alive by these devils, and I have no knife. Will you kill me?"

"My God!"

"Quick!" she said in the same low, steady tones. "They are coming; they will beat us down in a moment. Kill me!"

For answer Landless raised his voice until it rang high above the uproar, and arrested the attention of the combatants on both sides. "Fight with a will, men," he cried, "for help is at hand! Do you not hear the hoofs of the horses?"

"By God! you are right!" cried the Colonel, suddenly struggling to his feet. "Hold out, men! Anthony Nash reached Rosemead, and has brought us aid!"

"The dog priest!" the mulatto cried fiercely to Trail. "Was he here? Then they have sent for help, and Mother of God! it is here!"

"And coming at the planter's pace," answered Trail. "They will be upon us before we reach the boats."

The mulatto glanced at the friend with whom he had fled the Indies with a sinister smile. "Ay," he muttered to himself. "They will be upon us indeed, before we reach the boats, wherefore Luiz Sebastian goes not to turn pirate this time. He throws in his lot with the Ricahecrians whose canoes are close at hand in the inlet that winds into the Pamunkey. They are very swift, and in the Blue Mountains there is safety. But one thing first."

He gave a shrill and peculiar whistle which brought to him half a dozen Indians. He pointed to the body of Grey Wolf and then to Landless. A yell burst from the lips of the savages, and they rushed upon the latter. He met them, ran his sword through the heart of the first, of the second: Sir Charles moaned, stirred, and struggled to his knees. A third raised his knife; it would have descended, but Landless darted between the savage and the half-dazed, utterly helpless man at whom the blow was aimed, struck up the arm, and plunged his sword into the dark breast. A broken oar, snatched from the floor by the mulatto, descended upon his head, and with a woman's scream sounding in his ear, he fell heavily to the floor, and lay as one dead.

When he came to himself, it was to find the great room still crowded with men, and filled with noise and confusion, but the thronging figures and the excited voices were those of friends—of servants from the neighboring plantations, of small planters and tenants of Colonels Ludwell and Fitzhugh, the Surveyor-General, and Dr. Anthony Nash. He saw the master, panting, bleeding, but exultant, seize Dr. Nash's hands in his own. He saw Sir Charles smile and extend his box of richly scented snuff to Colonel Ludwell, and the women leaving their corner of refuge with hysterical laughter and tears; saw Betty Carrington in her father's arms, and Mistress Lettice being helped across a heap of dead by Captain Laramore. Indians, negroes, mulatto, scoundrel whites, were gone.

"They got off clear—the d—d villains," said Dick Whittington, appearing beside him, "just before the horses came up. But Woodson has gone after the slaves and the convicts with a party of Carrington's men. He'll catch them, I'm thinking, and they'll come to a pirate's end—that's all the pirating they'll get. The Indians will get clean away; they're most to the Pamunkey by now, I reckon."

Landless staggered to his feet, and put his hand to his head, which was bleeding. "The women are all safe?" he demanded.

"All but poor Annis," said the boy. "When I saw the poor maid fall, I thanked the Lord that Joyce Whitbread was safe in her mother's cottage at Banbury. But none of the others were hurt. There is Mistress Lettice and Mistress Betty Carrington—I do not see Mistress Patricia."

The master of Verney Manor, pouring forth a rapid account of the late affair to the gentlemen who crowded around him, was brought to a dead stop by the appearance of a man who had burst through the throng, and now stood before him, half naked, bleeding, with white, drawn face and wild eyes.

"What is it? Speak!" cried the master, terror of he knew not what growing in his eyes.

"Your daughter, Colonel Verney!" cried Landless. "She is not here. The Ricahecrians have carried her off."

With a sound between a groan and a scream the Colonel staggered, and would have fallen had not Carrington caught him. "Gone! Impossible!" cried Sir Charles vehemently, all his studied insouciance thrown to the winds. "She was with the women behind the barrier that we made. She is here."

He began to call her by name, loudly, appealingly, but there came no answering voice.

"She will not answer," said Landless hoarsely. "She is not here. She was with the women until just before the last. She saw her father fall, and thought him dead, and you dead, too, Sir Charles Carew, and she came to me, and prayed me to kill her. Then we heard the sound of the horses, and six Indians—Ricahecrians—with Luiz Sebastian, came against me. She stood at my side while I killed three. Then I was struck down, and I heard her scream as I fell."

The master freed himself from Carrington's supporting arm, and raised from his hands a face that had suddenly become that of an old man. But the voice was steady with which he said quietly,—

"Let them search the room thoroughly, for the child may be laying in a faint beneath these dead, though my soul doth tell me that it is as this man says, and that she is gone. But we will after them at once, and, please God, we will have her back, safe and sound. They have but an hour's start."

"Ay," muttered young Whittington to Havisham. "Only an hour. But the Chickahominies build the swiftest canoes in this corner of the world, and I have heard that the canoes of the Ricahecrians are to the canoes of the Chickahominies as swallows are to cranes."



CHAPTER XXVIII

BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS

Great trees, drooping from the banks of the Pamunkey, shadowed into inky blackness the water below them; but between the lines of darkness slept a charmed sheet, glassy, fiery red from the sunken sun. Three boats moved silently and swiftly up the crimson stream, until, rounding a low point, they came upon an Indian village, nestling amidst vines and mulberries, and girt with a green ribbon of late maize, when they swung round from the middle stream and made for the bank. They were rowed by stalwart servants, and in the foremost sat the master of Verney Manor and Sir Charles Carew. In the second boat was the Surveyor-General and Dr. Anthony Nash, and in the third the overseer, and among the rowers of this last was Godfrey Landless.

As they neared the bank their occupants saw that the usual sleepy evening stillness was not upon the village above them. A shrill sound of wailing from women and children rose and fell through the gathering dusk, and in the open space round which the bark wigwams were built, dark figures moved to and fro in a kind of measured dance, slow and solemn, and marked at intervals by dismal cries. As the boats touched the shore and the white men sprang out, a boy, stationed as scarecrow upon the usual scaffold in the midst of the maize fields, raised a shrill whoop of warning which brought the lamentation of the women and the dance of the men to a dead stop. The latter rushed down to the river side, brandishing their weapons, and yelling; but there seemed little strength in the arms that flourished the tomahawk; the voices sounded cracked and shrill, and the weak fury and noise died away when a nearer approach showed the newcomers to be white. A very aged man, with a face all wrinkles and a chest all scars, stepped from out the throng which was now augmented by the women and children.

"My white fathers are far from the salt water. Seldom do the Pamunkeys see their faces coming up the narrowing stream or through the forest. They are welcome. Let my fathers tarry and my women shall bring them chinquepin cakes and tuckahoe, pohickory and succotash, and my young men—"

He paused, and a low wailing murmur like the sound of the wind in the forest rose from the women.

"Where are your young men, your braves?" demanded the Surveyor-General. "Here are only the very old and the very young—they who have not seen a Huskanawing."

The Indian pointed to the crimson flood below. "There are my young men; there are my braves. Among them were a werowance and a sagamore. They two have strings of pearl thicker than the stem of the grape vine; they are painted with puccoon, and the feathers of the bluebird and the red-bird are upon them. They have hills of hatchets and of arrow heads, sharp and clean, and very much tobacco, and they sing and dance in the great wigwam of Okee, in the home of Kiwassa, in the land beyond the setting sun. But the rest—they lie deep in the slime of the river; it is red with their blood; their wives wail for them; their village is left desolate.... When the time of the full sun power was past the smoking of three pipes, came up the Pamunkey, swift as the swallow that skims its waters, the Ricahecrian dogs who, passing down towards the salt water twelve suns ago, slew the young men of a village that lieth below us. My young men went out against them, but a cloud came up and Kiwassa hid his face behind it. They came not back, their boats were sunk, the Ricahecrians laughed and went their way, swift as swallows."

"Ask him," said the Colonel huskily.

"Had they a captive with them—a woman, a paleface woman?" demanded Carrington.

"With hair like the sunshine and a white robe. And a man, the color of the falling sycamore leaf, one of those who work in the fields of the white fathers. The arms of the woman were bound, but his were not—he fought with the Ricahecrian dogs."

"Luiz Sebastian!" said the overseer with a muttered oath. "I thought as much when we found that he was not with the drunken scoundrels whom we took before they reached the Point. And we had better have killed him than all the rest put together, for he is the devil incarnate."

"Let us get on!" Sir Charles cried impatiently. "We waste time when every moment is precious."

The Colonel, who had been speaking to the Surveyor-General, came over to him. All the jovial life and fire was gone from his face, his eyes were haggard and bloodshot, he stooped like an old man, but the voice with which he spoke was steady and authoritative as ever.

"Ay," he said. "We must on at once, but not all of us. Richard Verney must not forget the danger of the state, in the danger of his child, nor let his private quarrel take precedence. I had hoped when we left the Manor at dawn to have been up with the villains ere now, but it was not to be. This will be a long chase and a stern one, and how it will end God only knows. We go into a wilderness from which we may never return. Behind us in the settlement is turmoil and danger, a conspiracy to be put down, the Chickahominies to be subdued, the strong hand needed everywhere. Every man should be at his post, and Richard Verney, Lieutenant of his shire, and Colonel of the trainbands, is many leagues from the danger which threatens the colony, and with his face to the west. He must on, but Major Carrington must go back to do his duty to the King, and Anthony Nash must not desert his flock. And you, Woodson, I send back to the Manor to do what you can to repair the havoc there, and to protect Mistress Lettice. My kinsman will go on with me; is it not so, Charles?"

"Assuredly, sir," said the baronet quietly.

"I'd a sight rather go with your Honor," growled the overseer, "but I'll do my best both by the plantation and by Mistress Lettice, and I look for your Honor and Mistress Patricia back in no time at all. We are to take the small boat, I reckon?"

"Yes, with four men to row you. We will press a boat and a crew from the next Pamunkey village. Pick out your men, and let us be gone."

"Humph! There's one that I reckon had best go back with us. Does your Honor know that you've got with you the head of all this d—d Oliverian business, the man that Trail swore was their general—that they all obeyed as though he were Oliver himself?"

"No! How came he here?" cried the master, staring at Landless, who stood at some distance from them with folded arms and compressed lips, gazing steadily up the glowing reaches of the river.

"Found him in the boat when I stepped into it myself. I didn't say anything then, for we were in a mortal hurry and he's a good rower. But I reckon your Honor will send him back with me? He'll give you the slip the first chance he gets."

"Of course he must go back," the master said peremptorily. "He should never have been brought thus far. A dozen or so of these Oliverians must swing as an example to the rest, and he, their leader, and a felon to boot, at their head. The service he did us last night can not help him—he fought for his own life. The Governor has sworn to hang him, and I am accountable for his safe delivery at Jamestown. Bind him and take him back with you, and send him at once to Jamestown under a strong escort." He turned from the overseer to the two gentlemen who were to go down the river. "Carrington, Anthony Nash, old friends, farewell—it may be forever. Anthony, pray that I may find my child safe and spotless."

They embraced, and he wrung their hands, and, stepping hastily into the boat, sank down and covered his face with his cloak. The Surveyor-General stood with a pale and troubled face, and Dr. Anthony Nash prayed aloud. The rowers took their places and the boat shot out into the middle stream.

Landless, seeing the second boat filling, and supposing that the third would receive its load in a moment, stepped towards it. As he passed the overseer, standing a little to one side with two servants belonging to Colonel Fitzhugh, a tenant of Colonel Verney, and an Indian from Rosemead, Woodson put forth an arm and stopped him.

"No, no, my man," he said with a grim smile but with a watchful eye, and nodding to the men to close in around them. "Your way's down, not up."

"What do you mean?" cried Landless, recoiling.

"I mean that the Doctor and the Major and I and these men go back to the settlements to look after things there, and that you are going to renew your acquaintance with Jamestown gaol."

For a moment Landless stood, turned to stone, within the other's grasp, then with a cry he broke from him and rushed to the water's edge. The boat containing the master had turned her head up stream and was beyond call; in the second boat the men held the oars poised while Sir Charles, with one foot upon the gunwale, gave a gravely courteous farewell to the Surveyor-General and the divine.

"Sir Charles Carew!" cried Landless. "I pray you to take me with you!"

Without moving, Sir Charles looked at him coldly, a peculiar smile just curling his lip.

"I remember a day," he said, "when you said that I might wait until doomsday and not hear favor asked of me by you."

"You are not generous," Landless said slowly, "but I ask the favor. I ask it on my knees. Let me go with you."

Sir Charles stepped into the boat and took the seat reserved for him. "I regret," he said politely, "that it comports not with my duty as a gentleman and an officer of the King to assist you in your very natural endeavors to escape the gibbet. Push off, men."

The boat shot from the shore and up the darkening stream, hastening to overtake its consort. Sir Charles raised his Spanish hat and fluttered a lace handkerchief. "To a happier meeting, gentlemen!" The Surveyor-General and the divine returned the salute, and stood in silence watching the canoe with its brawny rowers and the slender, elegant figure in the stern. It caught up with the Colonel's boat and the two grew smaller and smaller, until they became mere black dots and the dusk swallowed them up.

Landless watched them too with a face set like a stone. The overseer, backed by two of the servants, approached him with caution, but there was no need,—he submitted to be bound without a word, or struggle, or change in the expression of his face. He turned mechanically towards the boat, but the overseer plucked him back. "Not yet," he said. "We are all dead beat, and we have not the need to hurry that have those who are gone on. The Major's commander now, and he says sleep here a few hours. I'll fasten you so that you can't get away, I promise ye! Fegs! it's a pity that a man who can fight as you fought last night should have to die a dog's death after all! But you've only yourself to thank for it."

The red glow died from the river like the scarlet from cooling iron, and it lay dark and silent, dimly reflecting a myriad of stars. The sloping bank, the maize fields, tobacco patch and mulberry grove, the plateau upon which were ranged the wigwams of the Indians, the dark and endless forest—all the wide, sombre earth—had their stars also—myriads on myriads of fireflies, restlessly sparkling lanterns swung by legions of fairies. There was no wind; the cataracts of wild grape descending from the tops of the tallest trees stirred not a leaf; the pines were soundless. But the whip-poor-wills wailed on, and once a catamount screamed, and the deer, coming to a lick close by, made a trampling over the fern.

Landless, tightly bound to a great bay tree with thongs of deerskin, watched the night grow old with hard, despairing eyes. The stars paled and the moon rose softly above the tree-tops, silvering the world beneath. By her light he saw the little glade of which the tree to which he was bound marked the centre, and the recumbent forms of those who were to return to the settlements stretched on Indian mats laid upon the short grass. Worn out with the toil of the day and the storm and stress of the night before, they slumbered heavily. The watcher in their midst thought, "If I could sleep!" and resolutely closed his eyes, but the vision of a flying canoe and a brightness of golden hair, which had vexed him, passing up the reaches of the river over and over and over again, was with him still, and he opened them and raised them to the stars, thinking, "She may be above them now."

How still it was! no air, no breath, no sound—the thongs, that, wound many times around his body, bound him to the tree, fell at his feet, a figure slipped from behind the trunk, laid a hand, in which was a knife that gleamed in the moonlight, upon his arm, and whispering, "Follow," glided over the grass, past the sleepers and into the forest.

Swiftly but cautiously Landless went after it. The overseer lay within ten feet of him; he passed him, passed the unconscious servants, crossed a strip of moonlight, entered the shadow of a locust, and all but stumbled over a man lying asleep beneath it. He recoiled, and a twig snapped beneath his foot. The sleeper stirred, turned upon his side, and opened his eyes. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone so brightly that there was soft light even beneath the heavy branches of the trees, and by this light his Majesty's Surveyor-General and his Majesty's rebellious, convicted, and condemned servant recognized each other. For one long minute they stared each at the other, then, without a word or sign to denote that he was aware that aught stood between him and the moonlight, Carrington lay down again, pillowed his head upon his arm and closed his eyes. Landless was passing on with a light and steady step and the ghost of a smile upon his lips when the apparently slumbering figure put forth an arm and laid something long and dark across his pathway. He glanced quickly around, but the Surveyor-General lay motionless, with closed eyes. Stooping, he took up the object, which proved to be a richly inlaid musket with flask and pouch. He paused again, but no sign coming from the quietly breathing form on the grass he lightly and silently left it and the tiny encampment and entered the forest, where he found a dark figure leaning against a tree, waiting for him. Without a word it moved forward into the dense shadow of the forest, and in the same silence he followed it. They were now in thick woods, moving beneath interlocking branches and a vast canopy of wild grape that, stretching from the summit of one lofty tree to that of another, formed a green and undulating roof upon which beat the moonbeams that could not penetrate the close darkness of the world below. They came to a small and sluggish stream, flowing without noise between the towering trees, and stepping into the water, walked up it for a long while with giant blacknesses on either hand and above them the moon.

All this time the figure had stalked along before Landless without speaking or turning its head, but now, the trees thinning, and they coming upon a field of wild flax that lay fair and white beneath the moon, it quitted the lazy stream, and turning upon Landless as he too stepped upon the bank, showed him the bronze countenance and the gigantic form of the Susquehannock to whom he had once done a kindness, and with whom he had fought on such a night as this, in such a moonlight space.

"Monakatocka, I thought it had been you," said Landless quietly.

With the never failing "Ugh!" the Indian took Landless's hand and with it touched his own dark shoulder.

"I too am grateful, and with far more reason," said Landless smiling. "I will be yet more so if you will bring me out upon the bank of the river at some distance above yonder encampment."

"What will my brother do then?"

"I will go up the river."

"After the canoes in which sit the palefaces from whom my brother flees?"

"After the canoe which those canoes pursue."

"If my brother wishes to take the warpath against the Algonquin dogs," said the Indian quietly, "he must not follow the Pamunkey, but the Powhatan."

"They passed this village yesterday, going up the Pamunkey!" cried Landless.

"A false trail. Let my brother come a little further and I will show him."

He stepped in front of the white man, and moving rapidly across the field of flax, dived into the forest again. Following the stream in its windings they came to where it debouched into a wide and muddy creek, which, in its turn, flowed into an expanse of water that lay like molten silver beyond the fringe of trees.

"The Pamunkey!" exclaimed Landless.

The Indian nodded and led the way to a thicket of dwarf willow and alder that grew upon the very brink of the creek.

"While the palefaces slept, Monakatocka was busy. Look!" he said, parting the bushes and pointing.

Within the thicket, drawn up upon the sloping mud, were two large canoes, quite empty save for a debris of broken oars.

Landless gasped. "How do you know them to be the same?"

The Indian stooped and pointed to dark stains. "Blood. They had wounded among them. And this." He put something into the other's hand. Landless looked at it, then thrust it into his bosom. "You are right. It is a ribbon which the lady wore. But why have they left their boats, and where are they?"

The Indian pointed to the side of the larger canoe. "The hatchets of the Pamunkeys were sharp. They fought like real men. This canoe could go no further. See, it is wet within—they had to ply the gourd very fast to keep afloat so far. One canoe would not hold them all, so they hid both here. They knew the palefaces would follow up the river, so they cared not to stay upon its banks; the Pamunkeys, too, are their enemies. They have gone through the forest towards the Powhatan. My brother cannot see their trail, for the eyes of the palefaces are clouded, but Monakatocka sees it."

Landless turned upon him. "Will Monakatocka go with me against the Ricahecrians?"

"Monakatocka has dreamt of the village on the pleasant river where he was born. The arm of the white men cannot reach him here, in these woods, far from their wigwams and warriors and guns; it cannot pluck him back to be beaten. He toils no more in their fields. He is a real man again, a warrior of the long house, a chief of the Conestogas. Let my white brother go with him, across the great rivers, through the forest, until they come to the Susquehanna and the village of the Conestogas. There will the maidens and the young men welcome Monakatocka with song and dance, and my brother shall be welcome also and shall become a great chief and shall take the warpath against the Algonquin and against the paleface at the side of Monakatocka. In the Blue Mountains is Death. Let us go to the pleasant river, to the hunting grounds of the Conestogas."

Landless shook his head. "My thanks and good wishes go with you, friend, but my path lies towards the Blue Mountains. Farewell."

He put out his hand, but the Indian did not touch it. Instead, he stooped and examined the ground about him with attention, then, beckoning the other to follow, he moved rapidly and silently along the border of the creek. Landless overtook him and laid his hand upon his arm. "This is my path, but yours lies across the river, to the north."

"If my brother will not go with me, I will go with my brother," said the Conestoga.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE BRIDGE OF ROCK

For twenty days they had followed the Ricahecrians. At times the trail lay before them so plain that even Landless's unaccustomed eyes could read it; at times he saw nothing but untrodden ways—no sign to show that man had been in that wilderness since the beginning of the world—but the Susquehannock saw and went steadily onward; at times they lost it altogether, to find it hours, days afterwards.... It had led them westward, then south to the banks of the Powhatan, then westward again. At first they had to avoid an occasional clearing with the cabin of a pioneer rising from it, or some frontier post, or the village of one of the Powhatan tribes, but that time had long past. The world of the white man was far behind them, so far that it might have been another planet for all it threatened them; the Indian villages were few and far between and inhabited by tribes whose tongue the Susquehannock did not know. For the most part they gave these villages a wide berth, but sometimes in the quiet of the evening they entered one, and were met by the eldest man and conducted to the stranger's lodging, where slim brown maidens came to them with platters of maize cakes and nuts and broiled fish, and the warriors and old men gathered around, marveling at the color of the one and conversing with the other in stately gesture. Sometimes, crouched in a tangle of vines or behind the giant bole of some fallen tree they watched a war party file past, noiseless, like shadows, disappearing in the blue haze that filled the distant aisles of the forest. Once a band of five attacked them, coming upon them in their sleep. Three they killed and the others fled. They dipped into the next stream that crossed their path and swam up it a long distance, then emerged and went their way, tolerably confident that they had covered their trail. Sometimes they struggled for hours through coverts of wild grape, thick with fruit; sometimes they walked for miles down endless colonnades of pine trees, where the needle-strewn ground was like ice for slipperiness, and the blue sky gleamed faintly through the far away tree tops. The wind in the pines rose and fell in long, measured cadences. It made the only sound there, for the birds forgot to sing and the insect world kept silence in those vast and sombre cathedrals.

On the afternoon of the twentieth day they came to a halt upon the bank of a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide of limestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in the last few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart which seemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it was as though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer at hand they fell into lofty hills, over which the forest undulated in unbroken green. In front the river made a sudden turn and was lost to sight, disappearing through a frowning gateway of gray cliffs as completely as though it had plunged into the bowels of the earth.... Landless sat down on the bank of the stream above the fall and, chin in hand, gazed at the mountain-piled horizon. The Indian, leaning against a great sycamore whose branches trailed in the water, watched him attentively.

"My brother is tired," he said at last.

Landless shook his head. The Susquehannock paused, still with his eyes upon the other's face, and then went on, "We have searched and have found nothing. There have been five suns since the great rains blotted out the trail. My brother has done very much. Let him say so and we will go back to the falls of the far west and thence to the northward, to the pleasant river, to Monakatocka's people, to the graves of his fathers. And my brother will be welcome to the Conestogas, and he shall be made one of them, and become a great warrior, and both he and Monakatocka will forget the evil days when they were slaves—until they meet a paleface from the great water. My brother has but to speak."

"If these hills in front of us," said Landless with gloomy emphasis, "were higher than the Alps, I would climb them. If behind them there were another range, and then another, and another, if we looked upon the nearest wave of an ocean of mountains, I would climb them all. If they are before us, sooner or later I shall find them. But not to know that they are before us! To know that they may be to the north of us, may be to the south of us! that we may even have passed them! it is maddening!"

"We have not passed them," said his companion slowly, "for—" he stopped abruptly, broke off a bough from a sumach bush beside him, and falling on his knees, leaned far out over the stream. There were many tiny cascades in the brook with little eddies below them where sticks and leaves circled gaily around before they were drawn on to the next miniature fall, and into one of these eddies the Indian plunged the bough. The next moment he drew it carefully towards him, something white clinging to one of its twigs. It proved to be a fragment of lace—not more than an inch or two—and it might have been torn from a woman's kerchief. Landless's hand closed over it convulsively.

"It came down the stream!" he cried.

The other nodded. "Monakatocka saw it slip over that fall. It has not been in the water long."

"Then—my God!—they are close at hand! They are up this stream!"

The Indian nodded again with a look of satisfaction upon his bronze features. Landless raised his eyes to the cloudless blue, and his lips moved. Then, without a word he turned his face up the mountain stream, and the Indian followed him.

For an hour they crept warily onward, following the stream in its capricious wanderings. A broken trailer of grapevine, a pine cone that had been crushed under foot, the print of a moccasin on a bit of muddy ground told them that they had indeed recovered the long lost trail. They moved silently, sometimes creeping on hands and knees through the long grass where the bank was barren of bushes, sometimes gliding swiftly through a friendly covert of alder or sumach. The hills closed in upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made another bend, and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bed between banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. The Susquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned to his companion to do likewise. "Monakatocka smells fire," he whispered.

A moment later they rounded an overhanging, fern-clad rock, and came full upon that at which Landless stared with a sharp intake of his breath, and which even his impassive guide greeted with a long-drawn "Ugh!" of amazement.

Towards them brawled the impetuous stream through a wonderful gorge. The precipitous hillsides, clothed with a stately growth of oak and chestnut, changed suddenly into a sheer and awful mass of rock. On either side of the stream towered up the mighty walls until, two hundred feet above the water, they swept together, spanning the chasm with a majestic arch. Great trees crowned it; trailers of grape and clematis made the span one emerald; below, through the vast opening, shone the evening sky with little, rosy clouds floating across it. A bird, flashing downwards from the far-off trees, showed black against the carnation of the heavens.

The Indian uttered another "Ugh!" then stole forward a pace or two, stood still, and waited for the other to come up. "My brother sees," he said simply.

From a covert of arbor-vitae they looked directly up the creek and through the archway. Beneath it, and for a few yards on the hither side, the water flowed in a narrower channel, leaving a little strip of boulder-strewn shore. With a leap of his heart Landless saw, rising from this shore, the blue smoke of a newly kindled fire, and squatting about it, or flitting from place to place, a dozen or more dark figures. At a little distance from the fire, close against the wall of rock, had been hastily constructed a rude shed or arbor. As he gazed at this frail shelter, he saw the flutter of a white gown pass the opening which served as door.

"Night soon," said Monakatocka at his ear. "Then will my brother see one Iroquois cheat all these Algonquin dogs."

They drew further back into the dense shade of the overhanging boughs. A large flat boulder afforded them a secure resting-place, and drawing their feet from the stream, the two curled themselves up side by side upon its friendly surface. The Indian took some slices of venison from his wallet, and they made a slender meal, then set themselves patiently to await the night and the time for action. The tiny encampment was hidden from them by the thick boughs, but through the screen of delicate, aromatic leaves they could see the bridge of rock. Around them was the stir and murmur of the summer afternoon—the wind in the trees, the whir of insects, the song of birds, the babble of the water—but far above, where the great arch cut the sky, the world seemed asleep. The trees dreamed, resting against the crimson and gold of the heavens. The Indian's appreciation of the wonders of nature was limited—with a grunted, "All safe: wake before moonrise," he turned upon his side, and was asleep.

His Anglo-Saxon neighbor watched the pensive beauty of the evening with a softened heart. The glory behind the tremendous rock faded, giving place to tender tints of pearl and amethyst. Above the distant tree tops swam the evening star. In the half light the shadowy forest on either hand blended with the great bridge carved by some mysterious force from the everlasting hills. Together they made a mountain of darkness pierced by a titanic gateway through which one looked into heavenly spaces. The chant of the wind swelled louder. It was like the moan of distant breakers. The night fell, and the stars came out one by one until the blue vault was thickly studded. Up and down the sides of the ravine flickered millions of fireflies. Their restless glimmer wearied the eyes. Landless raised his to the one star, large, calm and beautiful, and prayed, then thought of all that star shone upon that night—most of the white town of his boyhood, lying fair and still like a dream town, above a measureless, slumberous sea. A great calm was upon him. Toil and danger were past; passionate hope and settled despair were past. That he would do what he had come this journey to do, he now had no doubt,—would not have doubted had there been encamped between him and the frail shed built against the rock all the Indians this side of the South Sea.

The stars that shone through the great archway slowly paled, the stream became dull silver, and down the towering darkness on either hand fell a soft and tremulous light like a veil of white gauze. Landless put out his hand to waken the sleeping Indian, and touched bare rock. A moment later the branches before him parted. He had heard no sound, but there, within three feet of him, were the high features and the bold eyes of the Susquehannock.

"Monakatocka has been to the great rock," he said in a guttural whisper. "The Algonquin dogs sleep sound, for they do not know that a Conestoga is on their trail. They have camped beneath the rock three days, and they will move on the morrow. They have built a shed for the maiden against the rock. About it lie the Ricahecrians, the moccasins of one touching the scalp lock of another. They keep no watch, but they have scattered dried twigs over all the ground. Tread on them, and the god of the Algonquins will make them speak very loud. But a Conestoga is cunning. Monakatocka has found a way."