ened, she was utterly alone. She took the oars again, and went
on her way up the river, rowing swiftly, for the mountains were far away,
and she might be pursued.

When she drew near to Jamestown she shot far out into the river, because
men might be astir in the boats about the town landing. Anchored in
midstream was a great ship,--a man-of-war, bristling with guns. Her boat
touched its shadow, and the lookout called to her. She bent her head, put
forth her strength, and left the black hull behind her. There was another
ship to pass, a slaver that had come in the evening before, and would land
its cargo at sunrise. The stench that arose from it was intolerable, and,
as the girl passed, a corpse, heavily weighted, was thrown into the water.
Audrey went swiftly by, and the river lay clean before her. The stars
paled and the dawn came, but she could not see the shores for the thick
white mist. A spectral boat, with a sail like a gray moth's wing, slipped
past her. The shadow at the helm was whistling for the wind, and the sound
came strange and shrill through the filmy, ashen morning. The mist began
to lift. A few moments now, and the river would lie dazzlingly bare
between the red and yellow forests. She turned her boat shorewards, and
presently forced it beneath the bronze-leafed, drooping boughs of a
sycamore. Here she left the boat, tying it to the tree, and hoping that it
was well hidden. The great fear at her heart was that, when she was
missed, Hugon would undertake to follow and to find her. He had the skill
to do so. Perhaps, after many days, when she was in sight of the
mountains, she might turn her head and, in that lonely land, see him
coming toward her.

The sun was shining, and the woods were gay above her head and gay beneath
her feet. When the wind blew, the colored leaves went before it like
flights of birds. She was hungry, and as she walked she ate a piece of
bread taken from the glebe-house larder. It was her plan to go rapidly
through the settled country, keeping as far as possible to the great
spaces of woodland which the axe had left untouched; sleeping in such dark
and hidden hollows as she could find; begging food only when she must, and
then from poor folk who would not stay her or be overcurious about her
business. As she went on, the houses, she knew, would be farther and
farther apart; the time would soon arrive when she might walk half a day
and see never a clearing in the deep woods. Then the