then came back to Audrey with a satisfied air. "There are no hoof-prints,"
he said. "No marks upon the dust. None can have passed for some hours."

A rotted log, streaked with velvet moss and blotched with fan-shaped,
orange-colored fungi, lay by the wayside, and the two sat down upon it to
wait for the coming horseman. Overhead the thunder was rolling, but there
was as yet no breath of wind, no splash of raindrops. Opposite them rose a
gigantic pine, towering above the forest, red-brown trunk and ultimate
cone of deep green foliage alike outlined against the dead gloom of the
sky. Audrey shook back her heavy hair and raised her face to the roof of
the world; her hands were clasped upon her knee; her bare feet, slim and
brown, rested on a carpet of moss; she was as still as the forest, of
which, to the Highlander, she suddenly seemed a part. When they had kept
silence for what seemed a long time, he spoke to her with some hesitation:
"You have known Mr. Haward but a short while; the months are very few
since he came from England."

The name brought Audrey down to earth again. "Did you not know?" she asked
wonderingly. "You also are his friend,--you see him often. I thought that
at times he would have spoken of me." For a moment her face was troubled,
though only for a moment. "But I know why he did not so," she said softly
to herself. "He is not one to speak of his good deeds." She turned toward
MacLean, who was attentively watching her, "But I may speak of them," she
said, with pride. "I have known Mr. Haward for years and years. He saved
my life; he brought me here from the Indian country; he was, he is, so
kind to me!"

Since the afternoon beneath the willow-tree, Haward, while encouraging her
to speak of her long past, her sylvan childhood, her dream memories, had
somewhat sternly checked every expression of gratitude for the part which
he himself had played or was playing, in the drama of her life. Walking in
the minister's orchard, sitting in the garden or upon the terrace of Fair
View house, drifting on the sunset river, he waved that aside, and went on
to teach her another lesson. The teaching was exquisite; but when the
lesson for the day was over, and he was alone, he sat with one whom he
despised. The learning was exquisite; it was the sweetest song, but she
knew not its name, and the words were in a strange tongue. She was
Audrey, that she knew; and he,--he was the plumed knight, who, for the
lack of a be