, a new angle to his cap, a
new swagger in his step, and deep in his frank blue eyes a strange
smile that touched the clean, curling corners of his lips.

"Look!" breathed Murphy, gliding along on the other side, "'tis the gay
day f'r Jack Mount whin Lyn Montour's black eyes are on him--the
backwoods dandy!"

I looked down at Elsin. The fever flushed her cheeks. Into her face
there crept a beauty almost unearthly.

"My darling, my darling!" I whispered fearfully, leaning close to her.
Her eyes met mine, smiling, but in their altered brilliancy I saw she
no longer knew me.

"Walter," she said, laughing, "your melancholy suits me--yet love is
another thing. Go ask of Carus what it is to love! He has my soul bound
hand and foot and locked in the wall there, where he keeps the letters
he writes. If they find those letters some man will hang. I think it
will be you, Walter, or perhaps Sir Peter. I'm love-sick--sick o'
love--for Carus mocks me! Is it easy to die, Walter? Tell me, for you
are dead. If only Carus loved me! He kissed me so easily that night--I
tempting him. So now that I am damned--what matter how he uses me? Yet
he never struck me, Walter, as you strike!"

Hour after hour, terrified, I listened to her babble, and that gay
little laugh, so like her own, that broke out as her fever grew, waxing
to its height.

It waned at midday, but by sundown she grew restless, and the surgeon,
Weldon, riding forward from the rear, took my place beside her, and I
mounted my horse which Elerson led, and rode ahead, a deadly fear in my
heart, and Black Care astride the crupper, a grisly shadow in the
wilderness, dogging me remorselessly under pallid stars.

And now hours, days, nights, sun, stars, moon, were all one to
me--things that I heeded not; nor did I feel aught of heat or cold, sun
or storm, nor know whether or not I slept or waked, so terrible grew
the fear upon me. Men came and went. I heard some say she was dying,
some that she would live if we could get her from the wilderness she
raved about; for her cry was ever to be freed of the darkness and the
silence, and that they were doing me to death in New York town, whither
she must go, for she alone could save me.

Tears seemed ever in my eyes, and I saw nothing clearly, only the black
and endless forests swimming in mists; the silent riflemen trudging on,
the little withered driver, in his ring-furred cap and caped shirt, too
big for him; the stolid horses plo