"Then let us go," said Landless, rising.

As they crept from out their leafy covert, the moon appeared over the tree-tops far above them, flooding the glen with light, and making a restless shimmer of diamonds of the rushing brook. The two men moved warily up the stream, setting their feet with care upon the slippery stones. Once Landless stumbled, but caught at a huge boulder, and saved himself from falling, sending, however, a stone splashing down into the water. They drew themselves up within the shadow of the rock, and listened with straining ears, but there came no answering sound save the cry of a whip-poor-will, and they went on their way. When they were within a hundred feet of the encampment, the Indian left the stream, crossed the strip of earth between it and the cliff, and pointed to a broken and uneven line that ran at a height of some five feet from the ground along the face of the cliff. Landless looked and saw a very narrow ledge, a mere projection here and there of jagged and broken rock, a pathway perilous and difficult as might well be imagined. So narrow and insignificant it looked, such a mere seam along the vast wall, that a white man passing through the ravine might never have noticed it.

"It is our path," said the Susquehannock. "It leads above the heads of these dogs and their crackling twigs, straight to where lies the maiden."

Without a word Landless caught at the stem of a cedar projecting from a fissure in the rock, and swung himself up to the cleft. The Indian followed, and with silence and caution they commenced their dangerous journey. Landless was no novice at such work. When a boy, he had often rounded the face of frowning white cliffs with the sea breaking in thunder a hundred feet below. Then a bird's nest had been the prize of high daring, death the penalty of dizziness or a misstep. Now, although not two yards below him was the solid earth, a misstep would send him crashing down to a more fearful doom—but the prize! A light was in his eyes as he crept nearer and nearer to the shed built against the rock.

They passed the smouldering embers of a large fire, and came full upon the circle of sleeping Indians. They lay in the moonlight like fallen statues, their bronze limbs motionless, their high, stern features impassive as death. From their belts came the glint of tomahawk and scalping knife, and beside each warrior lay his bow and quiver of arrows. Only one man had a gun. It lay in the hollow of his arm, its barrel making a gleaming line against his dark skin. The skin was not so dark as was that of the other recumbent figures, and the face, flung back and pillowed on the arm, was not the face of an Indian. It was Luiz Sebastian. He lay somewhat nearer to the shed than did the Ricahecrians, and directly in front of the doorway; as Landless paused above him, he turned and laughed in his sleep.

Slowly and cautiously Landless swung himself down from the ledge, his moccasined feet touching ground that was clear of pebbles and beyond the line of twigs. He glanced back to see the gigantic figure of the Susquehannock, standing upright against the rock, knife in hand, and watchful eyes roving from one to the other of the sleeping warriors, then stepped lightly across the body of the mulatto, and entered the hut.

Within it the darkness was gross. Pausing a moment to accustom his eyes to the blackness, there came to him from without the hoot of an owl. It was the signal agreed upon between him and his companion, and he wheeled to face the danger it announced.

The lithe, yellow figure that had lain in front of the doorway had waked. As Landless gazed, it rose to its knees, then with a quick, cat-like grace to its feet, stretched itself, cast a listening look around the sleeping circle, and laid its gun softly down, then with a noiseless step and a smile upon its evil face, it too entered the hut.

Landless waited until the mulatto was well across the threshold, and then sprang upon him, dragging him to the ground, where he held him with his knee against his chest. He writhed and struggled, but the white man was the stronger, and held him down; he tried to cry out, but the other's hands were at his throat choking the life from him. Putting all his strength into one hand, Landless felt with the other for his knife. The movement brought his face forward into the shaft of moonlight that trembled through the opening. "You!" said the eyes of the mulatto, and his clutching hands tore at the hand about his throat. The hand pressed closer, and with the other Landless struck the knife into the yellow bosom. When the writhing form was quite still, he rose from his knees, and looked down upon the evil face flung back to meet the moonlight. The struggle had lasted but a minute, and had been without sound—not a sleeping savage had stirred. But he now heard frightened breathing within the hut. By this time his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and he made out something white niched into the corner opposite. As he advanced towards it, it started away, and would have brushed past him, but he seized it. "Madam!" he whispered. "Do not scream. It is I, Godfrey Landless."

In the darkness he felt the rigor of terror leave the form which he held. It swayed against him, and the head fell back across his arm. He raised the fainting figure, and stepping across the body of the mulatto issued from the shed, to find Monakatocka standing beside the entrance, knife in hand, and watchfully regardful of the sleeping Ricahecrians.



CHAPTER XXX

THE BACKWARD TRACK

Landless turned to the pathway by which they had come, but the Indian shook his head, and pointing to the stream which, making a sudden turn, brawled along at their very feet, stepped noiselessly down into the water, first, however, possessing himself of Luiz Sebastian's gun, which lay upon the ground beside the hut. Landless, following him in silence, would have turned his face towards the river, but again the Susquehannock shook his head and began to make his way slowly and warily up stream.

The other knew how to obey. Holding with one arm the unconscious form of the woman he had come so many leagues to seek, and with the other steadying himself by boulder and projecting cliff, he followed his companion past the sleeping Ricahecrians, out of the shadow of the great arch, into the splendor of the moonlight beyond. It was not until they had gone a long distance, past vast, scarred cliffs, through close, dark, scented tunnels formed by the overarching boughs of great arbor-vitaes, up smooth slides where the water came down upon them in long, unbroken, glassy green slopes, that Landless said, in a low voice:

"Why do we go up this stream instead of back to the river? It is their road we are traveling."

The faint, reluctant smile of the Indian crossed the Susquehannock's face. "The white man is very wise except when he is in the woods. Then he is as if every brook ran fire-water and he had drunk of them all. A pappoose could trick him. When these Algonquin dogs wake and find the fawn fled and the yellow slave killed, they will cast about for our trail, and they will find that we came up from the river. Then, when they find no backward track, but only that we entered the water there, before the maiden's hut, they will think that we have gone down the stream, back to the river. They will go down to the river themselves, but when they have reached it they will not know what to do. They will think, 'They who come after the Ricahecrians into the Blue Mountains must be many, with great hearts and with guns.' They will think, 'They came in boats, and one of their braves and one Iroquois, stealing up this stream, came upon the Ricahecrians when Kiwassa had closed their eyes and their ears, and stole away the fawn that the Ricahecrians had taken, and killed the man who fled with them from the palefaces.' And it will take a long time for them to find that there were no boats and that but two men have followed them into the Blue Mountains, for I covered our trail where this stream runs into the river very carefully. After a while they will find it, and after another while they will find that the chief of the Conestogas and his white brother and the maiden have gone up the stream, and they will come after us. But that will not be until after the full sun power, and by then we must be far from here."

"It is good," said Landless briefly. "Monakatocka has the wisdom of the woods."

"Monakatocka is a great chief," was the sententious reply.

"Do you think they will follow us when they find how greatly we have the start of them?"

"They will be upon our track, sun after sun, keen-eyed as the hawk, tireless as the wild horses, hungry as the wolf, until we reach the tribes that are friendly to the palefaces. And that will be many suns from now. I told my brother that we followed Death into the Blue Mountains. Now Death is upon our trail."

They came to a rivulet that emptied itself into the larger stream, and the Susquehannock led the way up its bed. Presently they reached a gently sloping mass of bare stone, a low hill running some distance back from the margin of the stream.

"Good," grunted the Susquehannock. "The moccasin will make no mark here that the sun will not wipe out."

They clambered out upon the rock and stood looking down the ravine through which they had come. "My brother is tired," said the Indian. "Monakatocka will carry the maiden."

"I am not tired," Landless answered.

The Indian looked at the face, thrown back upon the other's shoulder. "She is fair, and whiter than the flowers the maidens pluck from the bosom of the pleasant river."

"She is coming to herself," said Landless, and laid her gently down upon the rock.

Presently she opened her eyes quietly upon him as he knelt beside her. "You came," she said dreamily. "I dreamt that you would. Where are my father and my cousin?"

"Seeking you still, madam, I doubt not, though I have not seen them since the day after you were taken. They went up the Pamunkey and so missed you. Thanks to this Susquehannock, I am more fortunate."

She lay and looked at him calmly, no surprise, but only a great peace in her face. "The mulatto," she said, "I feared him more than all the rest. When I saw him enter the hut I prayed for death. Did you kill him?"

"I trust so," said Landless, "but I am not certain, I was in too great haste to make sure."

"I do not care," she said. "You will not let him hurt me—if he lives—nor let the Indians take me again?"

"No, madam," Landless said.

She smiled like a child and closed her eyes. In the moonlight which blanched her streaming robe and her loosened hair that, falling to her knees, wrapped her in a mantle of spun gold, she looked a wraith, a creature woven of the mist of the stream below, a Loerelei sleeping upon her rock. Landless, still upon his knee beside her, watched her with a beating heart, while the Susquehannock, leaning upon his gun, bent his darkly impassive looks upon them both. At length the latter said, "We must be far from here before the dogs behind us awake, and the Gold Hair cannot travel swiftly. Let us be going."

"Madam," said Landless.

She opened her eyes and he helped her to her feet. "We must hasten on," he said gently. "They will follow us and we must put as many leagues as possible between us before they find our trail."

"I did not think of that!" she said, with dilating eyes. "I thought it was all past—the terror—the horror! Let us go, let us hasten! I am quite strong; I have learned how to walk through the woods. Come!"

The Indian glided before them and led the way over the friendly rocks. They left them and found themselves upon a carpet of pine needles, and then in a dell where the fern grew rankly and the rich black earth gave like a sponge beneath their feet. Here the Indian made Landless carry Patricia, and himself came last, walking backwards in the footprints of the other, and pausing after each step to do all that Indian cunning could suggest to cover their trail. They came to more rocky ledges and walked along them for a long distance, then found and went up a wide and shallow stream. Slowly the pale light of dawn diffused itself through the forest. In the branches overhead myriads of birds began to flutter and chirp, the squirrels commenced their ceaseless chattering, and through the white mist, at bends of the stream, they saw deer coming from the fern of the forest to drink. A great hill rose before them, bare of trees, covered only with a coarse growth of grass and short blue thistles in which already buzzed a world of bees; they climbed it and from the summit watched a ball of fire rise into the cloudless blue. The morning wind, blowing over that illimitable forest, fanned their brows, and a tide of woodland sound and incense swept up to them from the world below. Around them were the Blue Mountains—gigantic masses, cloudy peaks, vast ramparts rising from a sea of mist—mysterious fastnesses, scarcely believed in and never seen by the settlers of the level land—a magic country in which they placed much gold and the wandering colonists of Roanoke, the South Sea, and long-gowned Eastern peoples.

"Oh, the mountains!" said Patricia. "The dreadful, frowning mountains! When will we be quit of them? When will we reach the level land and the blue water?"

"Before many days, I trust," said Landless. "See, our faces are set to the east—towards home."

She stood in silence for a moment, her face lifted, the color slowly coming back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, then said suddenly:—

"Did my father send you after me?"

"No, madam."

"Then how are you here?"

He looked at her with a smile. "I broke gaol—and came."

A shadow crossed her face, but it was gone in a moment. "I am very grateful," she said. "You have saved me from worse than death."

"It is I that am thankful," he answered.

They descended the hill in silence and found the Susquehannock, who had preceded them, squatted before a fire which he had kindled upon a flat rock beside one of the innumerable streamlets that wound here and there over the land.

"The dogs yonder will need Iroquois eyes to spy out this trail," he said with grim satisfaction, as they came up to him. "Let my brother and the Gold Hair rest by the fire, and Monakatocka will go into the forest and get them something to eat."

He was gone, his gigantic figure looking larger than life as he moved through the mist which still filled the hollow between the hills, and Landless and Patricia sat themselves down beside the fire. Landless piled upon it the dead wood with which the ground was strewn, and the flames leaped and crackled, sending up thin blue smoke against the hillside and reddening the bosom of the placid stream. When he had finished his task and taken his seat, there fell a silence and constraint upon the man and woman, brought through so many strange and wayward paths, through lives so widely differing, to this companionship in the heart of a waste and savage world. They sat opposite each other in the ruddy light of the fire, and each, looking into the dark or glowing hollows, saw there the same thing—the tobacco house and what had there passed.

"I wish to believe in you," said Patricia at last, lifting appealing eyes to the opposite face. "But how can I? You lied to me!"

Landless raised his head proudly. "Madam, will you listen to me—to my defense if you will? You are a Royalist: I am a Commonwealth man. Can you not see, that as ten years ago, in the estimation of you and yours, it was all that was just and heroic for a Cavalier to plot the downfall of the Government which then was, both here and at home, so they of the Commonwealth saw no disgrace in laboring for their cause, a cause as real and as high and as holy to them, madam, as was that of the Stuart and the Church to the Cavalier.... And will not the slave fight for his liberty? Is it of choice, do you think, that men lie rotting in prison, in the noisome holds of ships, are bought and sold like oxen, are chained to the oar, to the tobacco field, are herded with the refuse of the earth, are obedient to the finger, to the whip? We—they who are known as Oliverians, and they who are felons, and I who am, if you choose, of both parties, were haled here with ropes. What allegiance did we owe to them who had cast us out, or to them who bought us as they buy dumb beasts? As God lives, none! We were no longer regarded as men, we were chattels, animals, slaves, caged, and chained. And as the caged beast will break his bars if he can, so we strove to break ours. You have been a captive, madam. Is not freedom sweet to you? We also longed for it. We staked our lives upon the throw—and lost. That dream is over,—let it go!... There is honor among rebels, madam, as among thieves. That morning after the storm, I had the choice of lying to you or of becoming a traitor indeed.... But as to what I had before asked you to believe, that was the truth, is the truth. I know that in your eyes I am still the rebel to the King, well deserving the doom which awaits me, but if, after what I say to you, by the faith of a gentleman, before the God who is above the stillness of these hills, you still believe me criminal in aught else, you wrong me much, you wrong yourself!"

He ceased abruptly, and rising, began to heap more wood upon the fire. The figure of the Indian, with something dark upon its shoulder, emerged from the spectral forest, and came towards them through the mist.

"Monakatocka has found our breakfast," said Landless, forcing himself to speak with indifference, and without looking at his companion. "I am glad of it, for you must be faint from hunger."

"I am very thirsty," she said in a low voice.

"If you will come to the water's edge, that at least can be quickly remedied."

She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated and followed him down to the brink of the little stream. "I would I had a cup of gold," he said, "and here is not even a great leaf. Will you drink from my hands, madam?"

"Yes," she said; then deliberately, after a pause, "for I well believe them to be clean hands."

Her own hand touched his as she spoke, and he put it to his lips in silence. Kneeling upon the turf by the stream, he raised the water in his hands and she stooped and drank from them, and then they went back to the fire and sat beside it without speaking until the arrival of Monakatocka, laden with a wild turkey. An hour later the Susquehannock carefully extinguished the fire, raked all the embers and ashes into the stream, hid beneath great rocks the debris of their morning meal, obliterated all moccasin prints, and having made the little hollow between the hills to all appearance precisely as it was a few hours before, when the foot of man had probably never entered it, stepped into the stream and announced that they were ready to pursue their journey. Before midday, the stream winding to the south, they left it, and plunging into the dark heart of the forest pushed rapidly on with their faces to the east.



CHAPTER XXXI

THE HUT IN THE CLEARING

Five days later saw the wayfarers some thirty leagues to the eastward of the hollow in the hills. They had traveled swiftly, sleeping but a few hours of each night and in the daytime pausing for rest only when Landless, quietly watchful, saw the weariness growing in the eyes of the woman beside him, or noted her lagging footsteps. They had left the higher mountains behind them, but still moved through what seemed an uninhabited territory. No Indian village crowned the hills above the streams; they encountered no roving bands; no solitary hunter met them; nowhere was there sign of human life. If their enemies were upon their track, they knew it not—perfect peace, perfect solitude seemed to encompass them. Still the Indian was vigilant; covering their trail with unimaginable ingenuity, taking advantage of every running stream, every stony hillside, building a fire only in some hidden hollow or fold of the hills, using his bow and arrow to bring down the deer or wild fowl which furnished them food—he stalked behind them, or sat bolt upright against the tree or rock beneath which they had made their resting place, tireless, watchful, the breathing image of caution. If he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him. Sometimes they rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat with his gun across his knees, piercing the darkness in every direction with keen and restless eyes. Nothing worse than the wolves—cowardly as yet, for though drawing swiftly nearer, winter and famine were still distant—threatened them; no sound other than the forest sounds disturbed them; through the scant undergrowth or over the moss and partridge berry brushed nothing more appalling than bear or badger. But the Indian watched on.

Day after day Landless and Patricia walked side by side through the reddening forest. His hands steadied her over crags or down ravines, or broke a way for her through vast beds of sassafras or mile-long tangles of wild grape, and when their way lay along the bed of streams he carried her. She had no need to complain of fatigue, for he saw when she was weary, and called a halt. At their rustic meals he waited upon her with grave courtesy, and when they halted for the night he made her couch of fallen leaves and wove for it a screen of branches. They spoke but little and only of the needs of the hour. She bore herself towards him kindly and gently, thanking him with voice and smile for all that he did for her, and there was no mistrust in her eyes; but he saw, or fancied he saw, a shadow in their depths, and thinking, "She does not forget, and neither must I," he set a watch upon himself, and bounds, across which he was not to step.

Upon the afternoon of the sixth day they were passing through a deep and narrow ravine—a mere crack between two precipitous, heavily wooded mountains—when the Indian stopped short in his tracks and uttered a warning "Ugh!" then bent forward in a listening attitude.

"What is it?" asked Landless in a low voice. "I hear nothing."

"It is a sound," said the other in the same tone. "I do not know what yet, for it is far off. But it is in front of us."

"Shall we go on?" demanded Landless, and the Indian nodded.

It was late afternoon, and the hills which closed in behind them as the gorge writhed to left and right hid the sun. Great trees, too, pine and chestnut, walnut and oak, leaned towards each other from the opposing banks, and together with the overhanging rocks, mantled with fern, made a twilight of the pass beneath. Here and there the silver stem of a birch stood up tall and straight, and looked a ghostly sentinel. "Do you hear it still?" demanded Landless when they had gone some distance in dead silence.

"Yes."

"And still in front of us?"

"Yes."

"Ah, what can it be?" cried Patricia, turning her white face upon Landless.

A cold wind, blowing from open spaces beyond, rushed up the ravine. "I hear a very faint sound," said Landless, "like the tapping of a woodpecker in the heart of the forest."

"It is the sound of the axe of the white man," said the Indian. "Some one is cutting down a tree."

"There can be no ranger or pioneer within many leagues of us!" exclaimed Landless. "No white man hath ever come so far. It must be an Indian!"

The Susquehannock shook his head. "Why should an Indian cut down a tree? We kill them and let them stand until they are bare and white like the bones of a man when the wolves have finished with him, and they fall of themselves."

"If my father still searches for me," said Patricia in a low voice, "may it not be his party that we hear? There may be a stream there. They may make canoes."

"With all my heart I pray that it be so, madam," said Landless. "But we will soon know. See, Monakatocka has gone on ahead."

She did not answer, and they walked on through the gloom of the defile. Presently their path became rough and broken, blocked with large stones and heavily shadowed by cedars projecting from the rocks above and draped with vines. He held out his hands and she took them, and he helped her across the rough places. He felt her hands tremble in his, and he thought it was with the ecstasy of the hope which inspired her.

"If it is indeed so," she said once in a voice so low that he had to bend to catch the words, "if it is indeed my father, then this is the last time you will help me thus."

"Yes," he answered steadily. "The last time."

They passed the rocks and came to where the ravine widened. The sound that had perplexed them was now plainly audible; there was no mistaking the quick, ringing strokes of the axe. They rounded a jutting cliff and abruptly emerged from the chill darkness of the gorge upon a noble landscape of hill and valley, autumn woods and flowing water, all bathed in the golden light of the sinking sun and inestimably bright and precious of aspect after the gloom through which they had been traveling. But it was not the beauty of the scene which drew an exclamation from them both. At a little distance rose a knoll, covered with short grass and fading golden-rod, and with its base laved by a crystal stream of some width, and upon the knoll, shaded by a couple of magnificent maples, and covered with the pale and feathery bloom of the wild clematis, stood a small, rude hut. Smoke rose from its crazy chimney, and upon the strip of greensward before the door rolled a little, half-naked child—a white child. As the travelers stared in amazement, a woman's voice rang out, freshly and sweetly, in an English ballad. The trees had been cleared away from around the knoll, and in their place rose the yellowing stalks of Indian corn. The little mound, feathered with the gold of the golden-rod and girt with the gold of the maize, rose like a fairy isle from the limitless sea of forest, and the apparition of a troop of veritable elves would have astonished the wanderers less than did the tiny cabin, the romping child, and the clear song of the woman.

The Indian glided to their side from behind the trunk of an oak. "Ugh," he said with emphasis. "He is mad and so he has his scalp still." As he spoke he pointed to where, at a little distance, a man, with his back turned to the forest, was busily felling a tree.

"He dares much," said Landless. "We did not think to see the face of a white man—pioneer, ranger, trapper or trader—for many a league yet. He has built his house in the jaws of the wolf."

Patricia gazed at the hut with wistful eyes. "There is a woman there," she said, and Landless heard her voice tremble for the first time in their long, toilsome and painful journey. "There is no need to pass them by, is there? It looks very fair and peaceful. May we not rest here for this one night?"

"Yes," said Landless gently, reading, as he read all her fancies and desires, her longing for the companionship of a woman, though for so short a time. The Indian, too, nodded assent. "Good! but Monakatocka will watch to-night."

They moved through the checkered light and shade towards the man who worked at the foot of the knoll. They were quite near him when the woman, whose voice they had heard, came to the door of the cabin, shaded her eyes with her hand, looked towards the ravine, and saw the three figures emerging from it. With a loud cry she snatched up the child at her feet and rushed down the knoll towards the man, who at the sound of her voice dropped his axe, caught up a musket which leaned against a stump beside him, and wheeling, presented the gun at the newcomers.

"Give me your kerchief, madam," said Landless, and advanced with the white lawn in his hand.

"Halt!" cried the man with the gun.

"We are friends," called Landless. "This lady and I are from the Settlements. This Indian is not Algonquin, but Iroquois—a Susquehannock, as you may tell by his size. You need have no fear. We are quite alone."

The man slowly lowered his gun. "What, in the name of all the fiends, do you here?" he said, wiping away with the back of his hand the cold sweat that had sprung to his forehead. He was a tall man with a sinewy frame and a dare-devil face, tanned to well-nigh the hue of the Indian.

"I might ask the same question of you," said Landless, coming up to him with a smile. "This lady was captured and carried off by a band of roving Ricahecrians who bore her into the Blue Mountains. We ask your hospitality for to-night. The lady is very weary, and she has not seen the face of a woman for many weeks. Your good wife will entreat her kindly, I know."

The woman, who now stood beside the man, smiled, but doubtfully; the man's face too was clouded, and there was an uneasy light in his eyes. Landless, looking steadily at him, saw upon his forehead a mark which served to explain his evident perturbation.

"You need not fear me," he said quietly. "'Tis none of our business how you come to be here in this wilderness, so far from what has been counted the furthest outpost."

The man, feeling his gaze upon him, raised his hand with an involuntary motion to his forehead, then dropped it, awkwardly enough.

"I see," said Landless. "I understand. I have been—I am—a servant. A runaway, too, if you like. I have been in trouble. I would not betray you if I could: that I cannot, goes without saying. Now, will you shelter us for this night?"

"Yes," said the man, his face clearing. "As you say, you couldn't do us harm if you would, seeing that masters, and d—d overseers, and bloodhounds are at the world's end for us. We are beyond their reach. Bring up the lady. Joan, here, will see to her."

An hour later the woman and Patricia sat side by side upon the doorstep in the long mountain twilight. At their feet the little child crowed and clapped its hands, and plucked at the golden-rod growing about the door. Below them, beside the placid stream, the owner of the hut and Godfrey Landless paced slowly up and down, now disappearing into the shadow of the trees, now dimly seen in the open spaces, while the Indian lay at full length beneath the maples, with his eye upon the blackness of the ravine down which they had come.

"It is fair to look upon, and peaceful," Patricia said dreamily, "but Danger lives in these dreadful mountains. Why did you come here?"

"We came because we loved," the woman said simply.

"But why into the very land of the savages, so far from safety, so far from the Settlements?"

The woman turned her eyes upon the beautiful face beside her and studied it in silence.

"I will tell you," she said at last, "for I believe you are as good as you are beautiful, and you are as beautiful as an angel. And, though I can see that you are a lady, yet you are woman too, as I am, and you have suffered much, as I have, and have loved too, I think, as I have loved."

"I have never loved," said Patricia.

The woman smiled, and shook her head. "There is a look in the eyes that only comes with that. I know it." She gathered the child to her, and beating its little hand against her bosom, began her story:—

"It is four years since I signed to come to the Plantations, to become the servant of an up-river planter—and to better myself. It was a hard life, my lady, a hard life—you cannot guess how hard.... One day a neighboring planter sent a message to my master, and I (for I served in the house) took it from the messenger. The messenger was one that I had known in the village at home, in England. He had left home to make his fortune, and I had not heard of him for a long time. They used to call me his sweetheart. When I saw him I cried out, and he caught my hands in his.... After that we met whenever we could, on Sundays, on Instruction days, whenever chance offered. He had tried to run away twice before we met, but he never tried afterwards. His master was a hard man—mine was worse.... After a while we began to meet in secret—at night.... You are a lady—that is different—you cannot understand; but I loved him, loved him as well as any lady in the land could love; better, maybe.... There came a night when I was followed, and taken, and he with me." She broke off to smell at the scentless spear of golden-rod which the child held up, and to say, "Yes, my darling, pretty, pretty, pretty," then went on with her eyes following the figures walking up and down beside the stream. "The next night found us in the sheriff's hands, in the gaol at the court-house. Oh that blank, dreadful, heavy night! I felt the lash already—I did not mind that—but I saw the platform and the post, and the gaping crowd beneath. I thought of him, and my heart was sick; I thought of my mother, and my tears fell like rain.... There was a noise at the window, and I stood upon my stool to see what it was. It was he! He had a knife and he worked and wrenched at the bars until he had wrenched them away, then dragged me through the window and we stood together beneath the stars—free! Another moment and we were down at the water side and into a boat which was fastened there. We loosed it and rowed with all our speed up the river. He had killed the gaoler and gotten away, bringing with him a musket and an axe. All that night we rowed, and when morning broke we were well-nigh past the settlements, for we had been far up river to begin with. That day we hid in the reeds, but when night came we sped up the stream. We came to the falls of the far west and left our boat there. For many days we walked through the woods, hurrying on, day after day, for when we lay down at night, I saw in my dreams the flash of the torches and heard the baying of the hounds. After a long while we came to an Indian village not many leagues from here, and there we found the mercies of the savage kinder than the mercies of the white man. They may have thought us mad—I do not know—but they did not harm us. There we dwelt for a time, in the stranger's wigwam, and there the child was born." She pressed the little hand which she held, and which she had never ceased to beat against her bosom, to her lips. "He would have stayed in the village, but in sleep I still heard the bloodhounds, and we left the friendly Indians and pressed on. We came upon this knoll on just such an evening as this—the light in the west, and the stream very still, with a large white star shining down upon it. We lay down beside it, and that night I slept without a dream.... We have been here ever since, and here we shall stay until we die."

"It is fair now," said Patricia, "but in a little while it will be winter and very cold."

"Bitterly cold," said the woman. "The snow lies long in these hills, and the wind howls down the ravine."

"And the wolves are bold in winter."

"Very bold. This scar upon my arm is from the teeth of one which I fought here, on the very threshold."

"The Indians threaten always, summer or winter."

"Ay, sooner or later they will come against us. We shall die that way at last. But what does it matter—so that we die together?"

The lady of the manor turned her pure, pale face upon the other with wonder, and yet with comprehension, written upon it.

"You are happy!" she said, almost in a whisper.

"Yes, I am happy," the woman answered, a light that was not from the faintly crimson west upon her face.



CHAPTER XXXII

ATTACK

About midnight, Landless, lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that came faintly in at the open door.

"Hist!" said the figure. "Ricahecrians!"

Landless sprang to his feet. "My God! You are sure?"

"They are coming out of the ravine. You will hear the whoop directly."

The owner of the hut, stirred by the Susquehannock's foot, started up. Such an alarm being about the least surprising thing that could happen, he kept his wits, and after the first intake of the breath and exclamation of, "Indians!" he went about his preparations coolly enough. Rushing into the cabin where Landless had already waked the women, he groped for his tinder box, and with a steady hand struck a light and fired a pine knot which he stuck into a block of wood pierced to receive it; then jerked from the wall his musket and powder horn.

"You both have guns," he said coolly. "Good! We'll die fighting." The woman had flown to the door, had seen that the heavy wooden bars were drawn across it, and now stood beside him with a resolute face, and an axe in her hands.

A moment of silence, and then the quiet night was cleft by the war whoop—dreadful sound, forerunner of death and torture, concentrating in its savage cadence all ideas of terror! A moment more, and there came the sound of many moccasined feet and the hurling of many bodies against the door. The door held, and the man put the muzzle of his gun in one of the cracks between the logs and fired. The explosion was followed by a yell. Shot and cry preluded pandemonium. Without were demoniacal cries, quick crashing blows against the door, stealthy feet, clambering forms; within were smoke and the noise of the muskets, the crying of the child, and a red and flickering light which now brought out each detail of the rude interior, now plunged all into shadow.

"We are making it hot for them," cried the owner of the hut, reloading his musket. "There's some shall go to hell before we do. Joan, my girl—"

An arrow, whistling through a crack, pierced his brain and he fell to the ground with a crash. The shriek that the woman set up was answered from without by a triumphant yell, and then one voice was heard speaking.

"It is the mulatto!" cried Patricia, clasping her hands.

"Yes," answered Landless grimly. "I thought I had done for that devil, but it seems not. May I have better luck this time!"

"Ugh!" said the Indian, and pointed to the roof, which was low and thatched with dried grass and moss.

"I see," said Landless. "The cabin is on fire. We must leave it in five minutes, come what may."

"We will never leave it alive," the Indian said calmly. "The dogs have us fast. The Chief of the Conestogas will die in a strange land; his bones will be a plaything for the wolves of the mountains; his scalp will hang before the wigwam of an Algonquin dog. He will never see the village and the pleasant river, never will he smoke the peace pipe, he and his braves, with the Wyandots and the Lenni Lenape, sitting beneath the mulberries in front of the lodge. He will never see the cornfeast. He will never dance the war dance again, nor will he lead the war party. The sagamore dies, and who will tell his tribe? He falls like a leaf in the forest, like a pebble that is cast into the water. The leaf is not seen: the stream closes above the pebble—it is gone!" His voice rose into a chant, stern and mournful, and his vast form appeared to expand, to become taller. He threw down his gun and drew his long, bright knife.

"They are upon us!" cried Landless, and thrust Patricia behind him.

The rude door, constructed of the trunks of saplings, bound together with withes, crashed inwards, coming to the floor with a tremendous noise, and a dozen savages precipitated themselves into the cabin. Landless fired, bringing one to his knee; then clubbed his musket and swung it over his shoulder. Between him and the Susquehannock, standing beside him with bent body and knife drawn back against his breast, and the invaders, was a space some few feet in width, and in this space something dreadful now happened.

On one side lay the body of the man with the woman crouched above it, on the other a pile of skins upon which lay the little child. It had sobbed itself into exhaustion and quiet, but terrified afresh by the savage forms pouring through the doorway, the increased and awful clamor, the flames which had now seized upon the walls, and the choking smoke which filled the hut, it now scrambled from the pallet, and with a weak cry started across the space towards its mother. It crossed the path of the Ricahecrian chief—he glanced downwards, saw the tiny tottering figure with its outstretched arms, caught it up, and holding it by its feet, dashed its head against the ground. The cry which the child uttered as he raised it reached the until then deaf ears of the mother. She started up with a shriek that rang high above the yelling of the savages, and darted forward, only to receive at her very feet the mangled form of the baby she had sung to sleep but a few hours before. She caught it to her breast and with another dreadful cry rushed upon the savage. He met her, seized her free arm, raised it, and plunged his knife into her bosom. Still clasping the child to her bosom, she fell without a groan, while the Indian bounded on towards the three who yet remained alive.

The Susquehannock met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a cold smile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When the Ricahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless—one Indian dead before him, another writhing away like a wounded snake—confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure and the amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were the flames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the score or more who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its walls, which were fast becoming those of a furnace, the majority retreating to the fresh air outside, whence they whooped on to their devil's work the bolder spirits within.

These now bore down en masse upon the devoted three. One threw his tomahawk; it whistled within half an inch of Landless's head, and stuck into the wall behind him. Another struck at him with his knife, but he beat him down with his musket, and turned again to the mulatto, who, knife in hand, watched his chance to run in upon him.

"Look to the yellow slave, my brother," cried the Susquehannock, "I will care for these dogs," and hurled his gigantic form upon them. One went down before his knife; he broke the back of another, bending him like a reed across his knee; a third fell, cleft to the brain by his tomahawk—there was a fresh influx from without, and he was borne down and knives thrust into him. Struggling to his feet, with one last superhuman exertion of his vast strength, he shook them off as a stag shakes off the dogs, and stretching out his arm, cried to Landless, dimly seen through the ever thickening smoke;—

"My brother, farewell! I said we should find Death in the Blue Mountains.... The Iroquois laughs at the Algonquin dogs, laughs at Death—dies laughing."

He broke into wild, unearthly, choking laughter, his figure swaying to and fro like a pine in a storm. The laughter, an indescribable and most dreadful sound, became low, choked, a mere rattle in the throat, died into silence, and the laugher crashed to the ground like a pine for which the storm has been too much.

Landless drew a breath that was like a moan, but kept his eyes upon the yellow menace before him.

"The Ricahecrians are my good friends," said Luiz Sebastian. "They promise me a wigwam in their village in the Blue Mountains. I shall lead to it a bride, and she shall be no Indian girl."

Landless struck at him over the dead body between them, but the mulatto, springing back, avoided the blow.

"It is my hour," he said, still with a smile.

A portion of the roof fell in, making a barrier of flame between them. A volume of smoke arose, and through it Landless and Patricia dimly saw Indians and mulatto making for the doorway, driven forth by the intolerable heat and the imminent danger of the burning walls and the remainder of the roof caving in upon them. Beyond Landless was the square opening leading into the tiny shed in which he had been sleeping when this midnight visitation came upon them. Raising Patricia in his arms, he made for it, and they presently found themselves in temporary security. It was but for a moment, he knew, for the flames were already taking hold upon the shed, but as he set his burden down he whispered encouraging words.

"I know," she answered. "We are in God's hands. I would rather die than to come into that man's power. But the door to the shed is open and the way seems clear. Could we not escape even now?"

"Alas! madam, the flames make it as light as day around the cabin. They would certainly see us. And yet if we stay, we burn. When the fire reaches this straw above our heads we will try it."

"I would rather stay here," said Patricia.

Behind them the flames roared and crackled, the cabin burning like a torch, and with the flames rose and fell the triumphant cries of the savages, who, unaware of the existence of the tiny shed, so covered with the vines that draped the cabin that it seemed one with it, congregated in front of the gap in the wall where had been the door, and waited for their still living victims to emerge from it.

"Look!" breathed Patricia, grasping Landless's arm.

They stood facing the open door of the shed, and gazing through it down the lit slope of the knoll. Into the light, out of the darkness at the foot of the hill, now glided a man, naked save for the loin cloth, and painted with horrible devices; in the figure, noiseless and bent forward, savage cunning; in the eyes, the lust for blood. In his footsteps came his double, then a third, in all points exactly similar, then a fourth, a fifth—a long line, creeping as silently as shadows—a nightmare procession—up through the lurid light.

Landless drew Patricia further into the shadow.

"Wait," he said. "They may prove our deliverance."

The stealthy line reached the summit of the knoll, then broadened into a disc, and swept past the frail shelter in which stood the fugitives. A moment, and the war whoop rang out, to be answered by a burst of yells from the Ricahecrians, and then by prolonged and awful clamor.

"Now is our time," said Landless.

Hand in hand they ran from the shed that was now in a light flame, and down the slope up which had come the band of unconscious Samaritans.

"The stream!" said Landless. "There is a small raft upon it if they have not destroyed it."

They made for the water, found the raft hidden in a clump of reeds and uninjured, and stepped upon it. In ten minutes' time from the appearance of the new factor in the sum they were moving steadily, if slowly, down a stream so wide that in Europe it would have been called a river. The glare from the burning cabin faded, the flaming mass itself shrunk until it looked a burning bush, then dwindled to a star. The noise of the struggle upon the mount was with them longer, but at length it, too, died away.

"Which will conquer?" said Patricia at last, from where she crouched at the feet of Landless, who stood erect, poling.

"The Ricahecrians were the stronger," he answered. "But they may be so handled that they will not come at us again. That must be our hope."

There followed a long silence, broken by Patricia.

"The baby," she said in a quivering voice, "the poor, pretty, innocent little thing!"

"It is well with it," said Landless. "It is spared all toil and suffering. It is better as it is."

"The man and woman went together," said Patricia, still with the sob in her voice. "They would have chosen it so, I think. But the poor Indian—"

"He was my friend," said Landless slowly, "and I brought him death."

"It is I that brought him death!" cried Patricia, tossing up her arms. "I that shall bring you death!"

Her voice rose into a cry that echoed drearily from the hills about them, and she beat her hands against the raft with a sudden passion.

"You would bring me no unwelcome gift," said Landless steadily, "provided only that the time when I could serve you with my life were past."

She did not answer, and they floated on in silence down the little river, between banks lined with dwarf willows and sighing reeds. With the dawn they came to rapids through which they could not pilot their frail craft. Leaving the water, they turned their faces towards the rising sun, and pursued their journey through the forest that seemed to stretch to the end of the world.



CHAPTER XXXIII

THE FALL OF THE LEAF

Days passed, and the forest put on a beauty, austere, yet fantastic, bizarre. Above it hung a pale blue sky; within it, a perpetual, pale blue haze, through which blazed the scarlet and gold of the trees—great bonfires which did not warm, flaming pyres which were never consumed. Morning and evening a shroud of chill, white mist fell upon them, or they would have mocked the sunrise and the sunset. Along the summit of low hills ran a comb of fire—the scarlet of the sumach, leaf and berry; underfoot were crimson vines like trails and splashes of blood; into the streams from which the wanderers stooped to drink, fell the gold of the sycamore. From the hills they looked down upon a red and yellow world, a gorgeous bourgeoning and blossoming that put the spring to shame, a sea of splendor with here and there a dark-green isle of cedar or of pine. Day after day saw the same calm blue sky, the same blue haze, the same slow drifting of crimson and gold to earth. The winds did not blow, and the murmur of the forest was hushed. All sound seemed muffled and remote. The deer passed noiseless down the long aisles, the beaver and the otter slipped noiseless into the stream, the bear rolled its shambling bulk away from human neighborhood like a shapeless shadow. At times vast flocks of wild pigeons darkened the air, but they passed like a cloud. The singing birds were gone. Only at night did sound awake, for then the wolves howled, and the infrequent scream of the panther chilled the blood, and the fires which the wanderers must needs build roared and crackled through the darkness. In the daytime beauty, vast and melancholy; in the night, shadows and mysteries, the voice of wild beasts and the stillness of the stars; at all times an enemy, they knew not how far away or how near at hand, behind them.

Through this world which seemed more a phantasm than a reality, Landless and Patricia fared, and were happy. All passion, all fear, all mistrust and anger slept in that enchanted calm. They never spoke of the past, they had well-nigh ceased to think of it. When they knelt upon the turf beside some crystal brook, and drank of the water which seemed red wine or molten gold according to the nature of the trees above it, it might have been the water of Lethe.

In the illimitable forest, too, in the monotony of sunshine and shade, of glade and dell, of crystal streams and tiny valleys, each the counterpart of the other, in dense woods and grassy savannahs; in the yesterday so like to-day, and the to-day so like to-morrow, there was no hint of the future. It was enchanted ground, where to-morrow must always be like to-day. They kept their faces to the east, and they walked each day as many leagues as her strength would permit, and Landless, imitating as best he could the dead Susquehannock, took all precautions to cover their trail; but that done all was done, and they put care behind them. Landless, walking in a dream, knew that it was a dream, and said to himself, "I must awaken, but not yet. I will dream and be happy yet a little while." But Patricia dreamt and knew it not. She kept her wonted state, or, rather, with a quiet insistence he kept it for her. He never addressed her save as "Madam," and he cared for her comfort, and in all things bore himself towards her with the formal courtesy he would have shown a queen. He said to himself, "Godfrey Landless, Godfrey Landless, thou mayst forget much, perhaps, for a little while; but not this! If thou dost, thou art no honorable man."

Master of himself, he walked beside her, cared for her, tended her, guarded her, served her as if he had been a knight-errant out of a romance, and she a distressed princess. And she rewarded him with a delicate kindliness, and a perfectly trustful, childlike dependence upon his strength, wisdom, and resource. All her bearing towards him was marked by an inexpressible charm, half-playful, wholly gracious and womanly. The lady of the manor was gone, and in her place moved the Patricia Verney of the enchanted forest—a very different creature.

Thus they fared through the dying summer, and were happy in the present of soft sunshine, tender haze, fantastic beauty. Sometimes they walked in silence, too truly companions to feel the need of words; at other times they talked, and the hours flew past, for they both had wit, intelligence, quick fancy, high imagination. Sometimes their laughter rang through the glades of the forest, and set the squirrels in the oaks to chattering; sometimes in the melancholy grace of the evening when the purple twilight sank through the trees, and the large stars came out one by one, they spoke of grave things, of the mysteries of life and death, of the soul and its hereafter. She had early noticed that he never lay down at night without having first silently prayed. There had been a time when she would have laughed at this as Puritan hypocrisy, but now, one dark night, when the noises of the forest were loud about them, and the wind rushed through the trees, she came close to him and knelt beside him. Thenceforward each night, before they lay down beside their fire, and when from out the darkness came all weird and mournful sounds, when the owl hooted, and the catamount screamed, and the long howl of the wolf was answered by its fellow, he stood with bared head, and in a few short, simple words commended them both to God. "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety."

There came a day when they sat down to rest upon the dark, smooth ground in a belt of pines, and looked between rows of stately columns to where, in the distance, the arcade was closed by a broken and confused glory of crimson oak and yellow maple. Landless told her that it was like gazing at a rose window down the long nave of a cathedral.

"I have never seen a cathedral," she said; "I have dreamed of them, though, of your Milton's 'dim religious light,' and of the rolling music."

"I have seen many," he answered. "But none of them are to me what the abbey at Westminster is. If you should ever see it—"

Something in her face stopped him; there was a silence, and then he said quietly:—

"When you shall see it, is perhaps better, madam?"

"Yes," she answered, gazing before her with wide fixed eyes.

He did not finish his sentence, and neither spoke again until they had left the pines and were forcing their way through the tall grass and reeds of a wide savannah. They came to a small, clear stream, dotted with wild fowl and mirroring the pale blue sky, and he lifted her in his arms as was his wont and bore her through the shallow water. As he set her gently down upon the other side, she said in a low voice, "I thought you knew. Had it not been for that night, that night which sets us here, you and me,—I should be now in London, at Whitehall, at some masque or pageant perhaps. I should be all clad in brocade and jewels, not like this—" She touched her ragged gown as she spoke, then burst into strange laughter. "But God disposes! And you—"

"I should be in a place which is never mentioned at Court, madam," said Landless grimly. "The grave, to wit. Unless indeed his Excellency proposed hanging me in chains."

She cried out as though she had been struck. "Don't!" she said passionately. "Don't speak to me so! I will not bear it!" and ran past him into the woods beyond the savannah.

When he came up with her he found her lying on a mossy bank with her face hidden.

"Madam," he said, kneeling beside her, "forgive me."

She lifted a colorless face from her hands. "How far are we from the Settlements?" she demanded.

"I do not know, madam. Some twenty leagues, probably, from the frontier posts."

"How far from the friendly tribes?"

"Something less than that distance."

"Then when we reach them, sir," she said imperiously, "you are to leave me with them at one of the villages above the falls."

"To leave you there!"

"Yes. You will tell them that I am the daughter of one of the paleface chiefs, of one whom the great white chief calls 'brother,' and then they will not dare to harm me or to detain me. They will send me down the river to the nearest post, and the men there will bring me on to Jamestown, and so home."

"And why may not I bring you on to Jamestown—and so home?" demanded Landless with a smile.

"Because—because—you know that you are lost if you return to the Settlements."

"And nevertheless I shall return," he said with another smile.

She struck her hands together. "You will be mad—mad! If you had not been their leader!—but as it is, there is no hope. Leave me with the friendly Indians, then go yourself to the northward. Make for New Amsterdam. God will carry you through the Indians as he has done so far. I will pray to him that he do so. Ah, promise me that you will go!"

Landless took her hand and kissed it. "Were you in absolute safety, madam," he said gently, "and if it were not for one other thing, I would go, because you wish it, and because I would save you any pang, however slight, that you might feel for the fate of one who was, who is, your servant—your slave. I would go from you, and because it else might grieve you, I would strive to keep my life through the forest, through the winter—"

"Ah, the winter!" she cried. "I had forgotten that winter will come."

"But to do that which you propose," he continued, "to leave you to the mercy of fierce and treacherous Indians, but half subdued, friends to the whites only because they must—it is out of the question. To leave you at a frontier post among rude trappers and traders, or at some half savage pioneer's, is equally impossible. What tale would you have to tell Colonel Verney? 'The Ricahecrians carried me into the Blue Mountains. There your servant Landless found me and brought me a long distance towards my home. But at the last, to save his own neck, forfeit to the State, he left me, still in the wilderness and in danger, and went his way.' My honor, madam, is my own, and I choose not so to stain it. Again: I must be the witness to your story. You have wandered for many weeks in a wilderness, far beyond the ken of your friends. To your world, madam, I am a rebel, traitor and convict, a wretch capable of any baseness, of any crime. If I go back with you, throwing myself into the power of Governor and Council, at least I shall be credited with having so borne myself towards my master's daughter as to fear nothing from their hands on that score. The idle and censorious cannot choose but believe when you say, 'I am come scatheless through weeks of daily and hourly companionship with this man. Rebel and traitor and gaol-bird though he be, he never injured me in word, thought, or deed....' For all these reasons, madam, we must be companions still."

She had covered her face while he was speaking, and she kept it hidden when he had finished. The slowly lengthening shadows of the trees had barred the little glade with black when he spoke again. It was only to ask in his usual voice if she were rested and ready to continue their journey.

She raised her head and looked at him with swimming eyes, then held out two trembling hands. He took them, helped her to her feet, and before releasing them, bent and touched them with his lips. Then side by side and in silence they traveled on through the halcyon calm of the world around them.



CHAPTER XXXIV

AN ACCIDENT

It was early morning, and the mist lay heavy upon the forest and on the bosom of the James. Landless and Patricia raked together the dying embers of their fire and heaped fresh wood upon them. The flames leaped up, warming their chilled bodies and filling the hollow that had been their camping place with a cheerful light, in which the moisture that clothed tree bole and fallen log and withered fern glistened like diamonds. Their breakfast of deer meat and broiled fish, nuts and a few late clusters of grape, with coldest water from a spring hard by, was eaten amidst laughter and pleasant talk. When they had lingered through it and when Landless had carefully extinguished their fire and had seen to the priming of his gun, they addressed themselves to their journey.

A bowshot away was the river, and Patricia willed that they walk along its banks that they might see the white mist lift, and the silver flash of fish rising from the water, and the swoop of the kingfisher. Landless agreeing, they went down to the river, and standing upon a rocky spit of ground which ran far out into the stream, they looked down the misty expanse, then turned involuntarily and looked up. At that moment the fog lifted.

"Ah!" cried Patricia, and shrunk back, cowering almost to the ground.

Landless seized her in his arms and ran with her across the shingle and up the bank. Plunging into the woods he made for the little stream which flowed past their camping place, and entering the water, walked rapidly up it.

"Did they see us?" Patricia asked in a low, strained voice.

"I am afraid so."

"They turned their boats towards the land. They are in the forest by now."

"Yes."

"And there is no doubt that they are the same. I saw the scarlet handkerchief upon the head of the mulatto."

"Yes, they are the same."

"They were such a little way from us. Oh, they may be upon us at any moment!"

"We are in great danger," he answered gravely, "but it is not so imminent as that. They were nearly a mile above us, and they have to land, to hide their boats and to find our trail, all of which will take time. We may count on having an hour's start of them, and we will do all in our power to increase it by breaking our trail as we are doing now. Then we cannot be many leagues from the falls, and the post below them, or we may stumble at any moment upon some Monacan village which will not need our urging to fly out against the Ricahecrians. Please God, we will win through them yet."

Somewhat comforted, she lay within his arms without speaking until they left the stream, when he set her down, and giving her his hand, ran with her over the fallen leaves down the long aisles of the forest.

Red gold showers fell upon them; fiery vines clutched at their feet, or, swinging from the trees, struck at their faces with vicious tendrils; the pines made the ground beneath like ice; rotting logs covered with gorgeous fungi barred their way; dark and poisonous swamps appeared before them, and had to be skirted—the forest leagued itself with its children and did them yeoman service.

The two aliens hastened breathlessly on. The sun climbed above the tree tops and looked down upon them through the half denuded branches. Midday came, and the short bright afternoon, and still they went fast through the woods, and still they heard no other sound than the rustle and sough of the leaves and the beating of their own hearts. They came to rising ground, and mounting it, found themselves upon a chinquepin ridge, and before them an abrupt descent of rain-washed, boulder-strewn earth. It was so nearly a precipice that Patricia shrunk back with an exclamation of dismay.

"I will go first," said Landless. "Give me your hands. So!"

Half way down, the earth began to slip. Patricia, looking up and over her shoulder, uttered a cry. A great boulder, imbedded in the earth directly above them, was dislodging itself, was falling! At her cry Landless raised his eyes, saw the threatening mass, caught her around the waist, and with one supreme effort swung her out of the path of the avalanche which descended the next moment, bearing him with it to the ground beneath.

He was recalled to consciousness by the dash of water against his face, and opened his eyes to behold Patricia bending over him, very white, with tragic eyes, and lips pressed closely together. She had run to the river, flowing through the sunshine a hundred yards away, for water, which she had brought back in his cap, and she had taken the kerchief from her neck, wet it, and laid it upon his forehead. Her hands were torn and bleeding. He saw them and uttered an exclamation. "It is nothing," she said; "I had to move the rock." Scarcely fully conscious as yet, his eyes glanced from her to the great rock which lay upon one side, and upon which there were bloodstains. "I have had a bad fall," he said unsteadily, but with an attempt to speak lightly because of the trouble in her eyes, "but it is over. Come! we must hurry on. We have no time to lose."

As he spoke he strove to rise, but with the effort came a pang of anguish, and he sank back, faint and sick, upon the ground.

"Ah! you cannot!" cried Patricia with a great sob in her voice. "It is your foot. The rock fell upon it."

After a moment of lying with closed eyes, he sat up and with his knife began to cut away the moccasin from the wounded limb. Presently he looked up. "Yes, it is badly crushed. There is no doing anything with it."

For many moments they gazed at each other in a despairing silence, broken by Patricia's low, "What are we to do now?"

"We must go on," answered Landless. "It is death to stay here."

Holding by the bank against which he had leaned, he dragged himself up and stood for an instant with eyes dark with pain; then, setting his lips, took a step forward. The bronze of his face paled, and beads of anguish stood upon his brow, but he took another step. Patricia, the tears running down her cheeks, came to him and put his arm around her shoulder. "I will be your crutch," she said, striving to smile. "I will carry the gun, too."

Before them was a steeply sloping, grass-grown ascent rising to a broken line of cliffs, scarred and gray, crowned with cedars and hung here and there with crimson creepers, and with a chance medley of huge gray boulders scattered about their base. Up this ascent they labored, so slowly that the crags seemed like the mountain in the Arabian tale, ever receding as they advanced. Twice Landless staggered and fell to his knee, but when, after what seemed an eternity of pain and distress, they reached the summit and Patricia would have had him rest, he shook his head and motioned with his hand towards the narrow, boulder-strewn plateau at the foot of the crags.

With her accustomed unquestioning obedience she turned towards the rocks, and after another interval of painful toil they found themselves in a sort of rocky chamber, a natural blockhouse, of which the sheer cliff formed one wall and boulders of varying height and shape the others.

Above them gleamed the blue sky; through the gaps between the rocks they looked down upon the shining river and the parti-colored woods, and behind them towered the cliffs. A strong wind was blowing and it sent red leaves from the vines that draped the rock whirling down upon them.

"The tall gray crags," said Patricia in a strange voice, "and the Martinmas wind. The river flowing in the sunshine too."

Landless sank upon the rocky floor. "I can go no further," he said. "God help me!"

"I do not think another man could have come so far," she answered. "What are we to do now?"

"You must go on without me."

She cried out angrily, "What do you mean? I don't understand you."

"Listen," he said earnestly, dragging himself closer to her. "We can be but a very few leagues from the falls, still fewer from the Indian villages above them. Reach one of those villages and you are safe from these devils at least. We have kept the start of them. They may not reach this spot for several hours, and when they come, I will keep them here, God helping me, for more hours than one. This place is a natural fortress, and they have no guns. They will not take me until my ammunition is exhausted, and you know there is store of bullets and powder. They will think that you are with me, hidden behind the rocks—"

"And I shall be with you!" she cried vehemently.

"No, no. You must go through this pass in the cliff to the right of us, and thence down the river with all your speed. Please God, to-morrow will find you in safety. It is the only way. To stay here is to fall into their hands. And you must not delay. You must go at once."

"And you—" she said in a whisper.

"What does it matter if I lose my life to-day instead of a few weeks hence? I grieve for this," with a glance at his foot, "because it keeps me from being with you, from guarding you into perfect safety. Otherwise it does not matter. You lose time, madam."

She stood with heaving bosom and foot tapping the ground, an expression that he could not read in her wonderful eyes. "I am not going," she said at last.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE BOAT THAT WAS NOT

"You will not go?" cried Landless.

"No, I will not!" she answered passionately. "Why should you think such a thing of me? See! we have been together, you and I, for long weeks! You have been my faithful guide, my faithful protector. Over and over again you have saved my life. And now, now when you are the helpless one, when it is through me that you lie there helpless, when it is through me that you are in this dreadful forest at all, you tell me to go! to leave you to the fate I have brought upon you! to save myself! I will not save myself! But the other day it was dishonor in you to leave me below the falls—almost in safety. Mine the dishonor if I do what you bid me do!"

"Madam, madam, it is not with women as with men!"

"I care not for women! I care for myself. Never, never, will I leave, helpless and wounded, the man who dies for me!"

"Upon my knees I implore you!" Landless cried in desperation. "You cannot save me, you cannot help me. It is you that would make the bitterness of my fate. Let me die believing that you have escaped these fiends, and then, do what they will to me, I shall die happy, blessing with my last breath the generous woman who lets me give—how proudly and gladly she will never know—my worthless life in exchange for hers, so young, bright, innocent. Go, go, before it is too late!"

He dragged himself a foot nearer, and grasping the hem of her dress, pressed it to his lips. "Good-bye," he said with a faint smile. "Keep behind the rocks for some distance, then follow the river. Think kindly of me. Good-bye."

"It is too late," she said. "I can see the river through this crack between the rocks. One of those two canoes has just passed, going down the river. In it were seven Ricahecrians and the mulatto. I saw him quite plainly, for they row close to the bank with their faces turned to the woods. They will land at some point below this and search for our trail. When they do not find it, they will know that we are between them and the rest of the band, and they will come upon us from behind. If I go now, it will be to meet them. Shall I go?"

"No, no," groaned Landless. "It is too late. God help you! I cannot."

The large tears gathered in her eyes and fell over her white cheeks. "Oh, why," she said plaintively, "why did He let you hurt yourself just now?" She turned her face to the rock against which she was standing, and hiding it in her arm, broke into a low sobbing. It went to the heart of the man at her feet to hear her.

Presently the weeping ceased. She drew a long tremulous sigh, and dashed the tears from her eyes. Her hands went up to her disheveled hair in a little involuntary, feminine gesture, and she looked at him with a wan smile.

"I did not mean to be so cowardly," she said simply. "I will be brave now."

"You are the bravest woman in the world," he answered.

Below them waved the painted forest flaunting triumphant banners of crimson and gold. A strong south wind was blowing, and it brought to them a sound as of the whispering of many voices. The shining river, too, murmured to its reeds and pebbles, and in the air was the dull whirr of wings as the vast flocks of wild fowl rose like dark smoke from the water, or, skimming along its surface, broke it into myriad diamond sprays. Around the horizon towered heaped-up masses of cloud—Ossa piled on Pelion—fantastic Jack-and-the-Beanstalk castles, built high above the world, with rampart and turret and bastion of pearl and coral. Above rose the sky intensely blue and calm.

All the wealth, the warmth and loveliness of the world they were about to leave flowed over the souls of the doomed pair. In their hearts they each said farewell to it forever. Patricia stood with uplifted face and clear eyes, looking deep into the azure heaven. "I am trying to think," she said, "that death is not so bitter after all. To-day is beautiful—but ours will be a fairer morrow! After to-day we will never be tired, or fear, or be in danger any more. I am not afraid to die; but ah! if it could only come to us now, swiftly, silently, out of the blue yonder; if we could go without the blood—the horror—" she broke off shuddering. Her eyes closed and she rested her head against the rock. Landless watched the beautiful, pale face, the quivering eyelids, the coral underlip drawn between the pearly teeth, in a passion of pity and despair. Horrid visions of torture flashed through his brain; he saw the delicate limbs writhing, heard the agonized screams.... If he killed the mulatto, it might come to that; if the mulatto lived, he knew that she would kill herself. He had given her the knife that had been Monakatocka's, and she had it now, hidden in her bosom.... The glory of the autumn day darkened and went out, the bitter waters of affliction surged over him, an immeasurable sea; it seemed to him that until then he had never suffered. A cold sweat broke out upon him, and with an inarticulate cry of rage and despair he struck at his wounded foot as at a deadly foe. The girl cried out at the sound of the blow.

"Oh, don't, don't! What are you doing? You have loosened the bandage, and it is bleeding afresh."

Despite his effort to prevent her she readjusted the kerchief which she had wound about the torn and crushed foot, very carefully and tenderly. "It must hurt you very much," she said pityingly.

He took the little ministering hands in his and kissed them. "Oh, madam, madam!" he groaned. "God knows I would shed every drop of my blood a thousand times to save you. Death to me is nothing, nor life so fair that I should care to keep it. The grave is a less dreadful prison than those on earth, and I think to find in God a more merciful Judge. But you—so young and beautiful, with friends, love—"

She stopped him with a gesture full of dignity and sweetness. "That life is gone forever,—it is thousands of miles and ages on ages away. It is a world more distant than the stars, and we are nearer to Heaven than to it.... It is strange to think how we have drifted, you and I, to this rock. A year ago we had never seen each other's faces, had never heard each other's names, and yet you were coming to this rock from prison and over seas, and I was coming to meet you.... And it is our death place, and we will die together, and to-morrow maybe the little birds will cover us with leaves as they did the children in the story. They were brother and sister.... When our time comes I will not be afraid, for I will be with you ... my brother."

Landless covered his face with his hands.

The shadows grew longer and the cloud castles began to flush rosily, though the sun still rode above the tree tops. A purple light filled the aisles of the forest, through which a herd of deer, making for some accustomed lick, passed like a phantom troop. They vanished, and from out the stillness of the glades came the sudden, startled barking of a fox. A shadow darted across a sunlit alley from gloom to gloom, paused on the outskirts of the wood below the crags while one might count ten, then turned and flitted back into the darkness from whence it came. They beneath the crags did not see it.

Suddenly Landless raised his head. Upon his face was the look of one who has come through much doubt and anguish of spirit to an immutable resolve. He looked to the priming of his gun and laid it upon the rock beside him, together with his powderhorn and pouch of bullets. Raising himself to his knees he gazed long and intently into the forest below. There was no sign of danger. On the checkered ground beneath two mighty oaks squirrels were playing together like frolicsome kittens, and through the clear air came the tapping of a woodpecker. The forest was silent as to the shadow that had flitted through it. It can keep a secret very well.

Landless sank back against the rock. He had lost much blood, and that and the pain of his mangled foot turned him faint and sick for minutes at a time. He clenched his teeth and forced back the deadly faintness, then turned to the woman who stood beside him, her hands clasped before her, her eyes following the declining sun, her lips sometimes set in mournful curves, sometimes murmuring broken and inaudible words of prayer. He called her twice before she answered, turning to him with eyes of feverish splendor which saw and yet saw not. "What is it?" she asked dreamily.

"Come back to earth, madam," he said. "There is that that I wish to say to you. Listen to me kindly and pitifully, as to a dying man."

"I am listening," she answered. "What is it?"

"It is this, madam: I love you. For God's sake don't turn away! Oh, I know that I should have been strong to the end, that I should not vex you thus! It is the coward's part I play, perhaps, but I must speak! I cannot die without. I love you, I love you, I love you!"

His voice rose into a cry; in it rang long repressed passion, hopeless adoration, fierce joy in having broken the bonds of silence. He spoke rapidly, thickly, with a stammering tongue, now throwing out his hands in passionate appeal, now crushing between his fingers the dried moss and twigs with which the ground was strewn. "I loved you the day I first saw you. I have loved you ever since. I love you now. My God! how I love you! Die for you? I would die for you ten thousand times! I would live for you! Oh, the day I first saw you! I was in hell and I looked at you as lost Dives might have looked at the angel on the other side of the gulf.... I never thought to tell you this. I know that never, never, never.... But this is the day of our death. In a few hours we shall be gone. Do not leave the world in anger with me. Say that you pity, understand, forgive.... Speak to me, madam!"

The sun sank lower and the shadows lengthened and deepened, and still Patricia stood silent with uplifted and averted face, and fingers tightly locked together. With a moan of mortal weakness Landless dragged himself nearer until he touched with his forehead the low pedestal of rock upon which she stood. "I understand," he said quietly. "After all, there is nothing to be said, is there? Try to forget my—madness. Think of it, if you will, as the raving of one at death's door. Let it be as it was between us."

Patricia turned—her beautiful face transfigured. Roses bloomed in her cheeks, her eyes were fathomless wells of splendor, an exquisite smile played about her lips; with her nimbus of golden hair she looked a rapt mediaeval saint. Her slender figure swayed towards Landless, and when she spoke her voice was like the tone of a violin, soft, rich, caressing, tremulous.

"There was no boat," she said.

"No boat!" he cried. "What do you mean?"

"The canoe going down the river. I told you that it held seven Indians and the mulatto. I lied to you. There were no Indians, no mulatto, no canoe. The shadows of the clouds have been upon the river, and the wild fowl, and once a fish-hawk plunged. I have seen nothing else."

Landless gazed at her with staring eyeballs. "You have thrown away your life," he said at last in a voice that did not seem his own.

"Yes, I have thrown away my life."

"But why—why—"

The rich color surged over her face and neck. She swayed towards him with the grace of a wind-bowed lily, her breath fanning his forehead, and her hand touching his, softly, flutteringly, like a young bird.

"Can you not guess why?" she said with an enchanting smile.

All the anguish of a little while back, all the terror of the fate that hung over her, all the white calm of despair was gone. The horror that moved nearer and nearer, moment by moment, through the painted forest, was forgotten. She looked at him shyly from under her long lashes and with another wonderful blush.

Landless gazed at her, comprehension slowly dawning in his eyes. For five minutes there was a silence as of the dead beneath the crags. Then with a great cry he caught her hands in his and drew her towards him. "Is it?" he cried.

"Yes," she answered with laughter trembling on her lips. "Death hath enfranchised us, you and me. Give me my betrothal kiss, my only love."

For them one moment of Paradise, of bliss ineffable and supreme. The next, the crags behind them rang to the sound of the war whoop.



CHAPTER XXXVI

THE LAST FIGHT

Out from the forest rushed the remnant of that band which had smoked the peace pipe with the Governor one sunny afternoon on the banks of the Pamunkey. Tall and large of limb, painted with all fantastic and ghastly devices, and decorated with hideous mementoes of nameless deeds; with the lust of blood written large in every fierce lineament and dark and rolling eye; with raised hands grasping knife and tomahawk, and lips uttering cries that seemed not of earth—a more appalling vision could not have issued from out the beautiful, treacherous forest, a more crashing discord have come into the music of the golden evening.

For the two in their rocky fortress beneath the crags the apparition had no terrors. All the pain, the anguish, the hopelessness of the world was passing from them—the cry that swelled through the forest was its knell. They smiled to hear it, and with raised faces looked beyond the many-tinted evening skies into clear spaces where Love was all. The intoxication of the moment when hidden and despairing love became love triumphant and acknowledged abode with them. In the very grasp of death ineffable bliss possessed them. Their countenances changed; the lines of care and pain, the marks of tears, were all gone and the beauty of the happy soul shone out. For that brief space of time transcendent youth and loveliness was theirs. About them, as about the sun now sinking behind the low hills, there breathed a glory, a dying splendor as bright as it was fleeting. They felt, too, a lightness and gaiety of spirit—they had drunk of the nectar of the gods, and no leaden weight of care, no heavy sorrow, could ever touch them, ever drag them down again to the sad earth.

"You are beautiful," said Landless, gazing at her, even in the act of raising his gun to his shoulder; "as beautiful as you were the day I first saw you. I hear the drone of the bees in the vines at Verney Manor. I smell the roses. I look up and see the Rose of the World. My eyes were dazzled then, are dazzled now, my Rose of the World."

"That day I wore brocade and lace, and there were pearls around my throat," she said with a laugh of pure delight. "There was rouge upon my cheeks, too, sir, and my eyes were darkened. To-day I go a beggar maid, in rags, burnt by the sun—"

"The nut-brown maid," he said.

"Ay," she answered, "the nut-brown maid—'For in my mind of all mankind'—you may e'en finish it yourself, sir."

The Ricahecrians had paused at the foot of the ascent to hold a council. It was soon over. With another burst of cries they rushed up the steep and upon the rocks, behind which were hidden their victims. Landless, kneeling to one side of the gap between the boulders by which he and Patricia had entered, fired, and the foremost of the savages threw up his arms, uttered a dreadful cry, and fell across the path of his fellows. For one moment the rush was checked, the next on they came, yelling furiously and brandishing their weapons. Landless fired and missed, fired again and pierced the thigh of a gigantic warrior, bringing him crashing to the ground. The line wavered, paused, then turning, swept to one side and so passed out of sight.