tter listener, told her gracious tales of love, showed her how
warm and beautiful was this world that she sometimes thought so sad, sang
to her sweet lines that poets had made. Over and through all she thought
she read the name of the princess. She had heard him say that with the
breaking of the heat he should go to Westover, and one day, early in
summer, he had shown her the miniature of Evelyn Byrd. Because she loved
him blindly, and because he was wise in his generation, her trust in him
was steadfast as her native hills, large as her faith in God. Now it was
sweet beneath her tongue to be able to tell one that was his friend how
worthy of all friendship--nay, all reverence--he was. She spoke simply,
but with that strange power of expression which nature had given her.
Gestures with her hands, quick changes in the tone of her voice, a
countenance that gave ample utterance to the moment's thought,--as one
morning in the Fair View library she had brought into being that long dead
Eloisa whose lines she spoke, so now her auditor of to-day thought that he
saw the things of which she told.

She had risen, and was standing in the wild light, against the background
of the forest that was breathless, as if it too listened, "And so he
brought me safely to this land," she said. "And so he left me here for ten
years, safe and happy, he thought. He has told me that all that while he
thought of me as safe and happy. That I was not so,--why, that was not his
fault! When he came back I was both. I have never seen the sunshine so
bright or the woods so fair as they have been this summer. The people
with whom I live are always kind to me now,--that is his doing. And ah! it
is because he would not let Hugon scare or harm me that that wicked Indian
waits for him now beyond the bend in the road." At the thought of Hugon
she shuddered, and her eyes began to widen. "Have we not been here a long
time?" she cried. "Are you sure? Oh, God! perhaps he has passed!"

"No, no," answered MacLean, with his hand upon her arm. "There is no sign
that he has done so. It is not late; it is that heavy cloud above our
heads that has so darkened the air. Perhaps he has not left Williamsburgh
at all: perhaps, the storm threatening, he waits until to-morrow."

From the cloud above came a blinding light and a great crash of
thunder,--the one so intense, the other so tremendous, that for a minute
the two stood as if stunned. Then, "The tree!" cried Audrey. The