night and day would I be
alone in the forest and I did not care if a death should overtake me.
In my body my heart was dead and why should I desire the life of that
body?

And as I had planned I then accomplished. I discovered that Lightfoot
at pasture and I quickly had placed the saddle upon him and had turned
him down the mountain to choose a safe path for both himself and me. I
did not look upon those cradles of fragrant boughs in which the boy
Robert had lain at rest beside his great friend, the Gouverneur
Faulkner, from whom he had stolen faith and affection.

"Why did not you also steal his pocketbook as he lay asleep beside
you, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?" I questioned myself with
scorn and torture, as good Lightfoot crashed down from that Camp
Heaven into the dark night.

And on we rode, the large horse with the woman upon his back, for a
long night, through fragrant thickets that caught at my riding
breeches with rose tendril fingers and under thick forests of budding
trees, through whose branches of tender leaves the wise old stars
looked down upon my bitter weeping with nothing of comfort, perhaps
because they had grown of a hardness of heart from having seen so many
tears of women drop in the silence of a lonely night.

Then came a dawn and a noon and a twilight through which I pushed
forward the large horse with great cruelty, only pausing beside
streams to allow that he drink of the water and also to throw myself
down on my face and lap the cool refreshment like do all humble
things. And, when at last the stars were again there to look down upon
me, we arrived behind the barn of that Bud Bell to find all in the
little house at rest. I thought of that small child in sleep in the
arms of that woman, and a great sobbing came from my heart as I threw
myself into my Cherry, after giving a supper to good Lightfoot, and
fled down the long road to the distant city of Hayesville that lay
away in the valley like a great nest of glowworms in a glade of the
leaves of darkness. And among those glowworms I knew that more than a
hundred friends to me were beginning to go into sleep with deep
affection in their hearts for that Robert Carruthers whom wicked
Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, was about to steal from them. I
wept as I turned my Cherry through the back street and into the garage
of my Uncle, the General Robert. Then I paused. All was quiet in the
house and no light burned in the apartments of my