Chapter XI: Part 11

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 I,--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 to so 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 I. 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.

"They have found this pass too formidable," said Landless. "They will try now to force an entrance from the side. Do you watch the front, my queen, while I face them, coming over the rocks."

"I looked only at the mulatto," she said. "The others are shadows to me."

"His time is come," said Landless. "Do not fear him, sweetheart."

"I fear not," she answered. "I have the perfect love."

Along the top of a tall boulder to their right appeared a dark red line--the arm of a savage, with clutching fingers. Above it, very slowly and cautiously, there rose first an eagle's feather, then coarse black scalp lock, then a high forehead and fierce eyes. The echo of Landless's shot reverberated through the cliffs, and when the smoke cleared only the bare gray boulder faced him. But from behind it came a derisive yell.

"Thou wilt think me a poor marksman, my dear," he said, smiling, as he reloaded his musket. "I have missed again."

"It is because you are wounded," she said. "I would I had thy wounds."

"I had a wounded heart, but you have healed it," he said, and looked at her with shining eyes.

The sun sank and the long twilight of the hills set in. The evening star was brightening through the pale amethyst of the sky when Landless said quietly: "The last charge," and emptied it into an arm which for one incautious moment had waved above the rocks.

"It is the end, then," said Patricia.

"Yes, it is the end. We have beaten them back for the moment, but presently they will find that all we could do we have done, and then--"

She left her post beside the gap in the front, and came and knelt beside him, and he took her in his arms.

"It is not Death before us, but Life," she said in a low voice.

"It is God and Love, naught else," he answered. "But the river between will be bitter for you to cross, sweetheart."

"We cross it together," she said, "and so--" She raised her head that he might see her radiant smile, and their lips met.

"Hark!" she said directly with her hand on his. "What is that sound?"

He shook his head. "The wind has risen, and the forest rustles and sighs. There is nothing more."

"It is far off," she answered, "but it is like the dip of oars. Ah!"

Over against them, framed in the narrow opening between the rocks, his lithe, half-nude figure dark against the crimson west, and with a smile upon his evil lips and in his evil eyes, stood Luiz Sebastian. In the dead silence that succeeded he looked with a smiling countenance from the musket, now useless and thrown aside, to his enemy, wounded and unarmed save for a knife, and to the woman in that enemy's arms; then, without turning, he said a few words in an Indian tongue. From the dusky mass behind him came one short, wild cry of savage triumph, followed by another dead silence.

Still holding Patricia in one arm, Landless rose from his knee, and stood confronting him.

"We are met again, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian smoothly. Receiving no answer, he spoke again with a tigerish expansion of his thick lips. "You have had an accident, I see. Mother of God! that foot must pain you! But you will forget it presently in the pleasure of the pine splinters."

"I will forget it in the pleasure of this," said Landless, releasing Patricia, and springing upon the mulatto with a suddenness and violence that sent them both staggering through the opening between the rocks, out upon the narrow plateau and into the ring of Ricahecrians. Luiz Sebastian was strong, with the easy masked strength of the panther, but Landless had the strength of despair. The mulatto, thrown heavily to the ground, and pinned there by his adversary's knee, saw the gleam of the lifted knife, and would have seen nothing more in this life, but that a woman's cry rang out and saved him. Landless heard, turned, saw Patricia dragged from the shelter of the rocks, leaped to his feet, leaving his work undone, and rushed upon the knot of savages with whom she was struggling. A moment saw him beside her with the Indian who had held her dead at his feet. Behind them was the great boulder which had formed the front wall of their chamber of defense. He put his arm around her, and drew her back with him until they stood against this rock, then faced the advancing savages with uplifted knife.