s still. Tall cypress-trees reared
their heads amid the hollows and spread their branches like a wide
canopy over our heads; huge live-oaks crowned the hummocks; and here and
there great laurels lifted their pyramids of glossy, dark-green foliage.
Our passage was frequently obstructed by fallen logs, mossed over with
the growth of years; and tangles of vine, tough-stemmed and supple,
flung themselves from tree to tree across our path, resisting our
advance. All through the forest's higher corridors howled the riotous
wind; but along the tunneled ways we traveled it was scarce perceptible
at times.

In spite of my fatigue I felt a greater strength rising within me. We
had come so far without pursuit! I began to hope as I had never done
before; for was not my dear love free, and my face also set toward
friends?

As I mused thus we reached a higher level, and, through a rent in the
stormy sky a shaft of morning sunlight glanced across my shoulder and
plunged forward into the woods beyond. I looked back, startled, and for
a brief moment saw the sun's golden disc; then a black cloud effaced it
from the sky.

"Padre!" I cried, "we are travelling westward!"

"Yes," he said calmly.

"Westward!" I exclaimed again. "Westward--and inland! when the English
settlement lies to the north of us, upon the coast!"

He bowed again in silent acquiescence. Then my indignation broke forth,
and without stopping for further question I accused him bitterly of
breach of trust.

"Did you not promise Dona Orosia to deliver me to my friends?" I cried.

"What cause have you to doubt my good faith?" he asked, turning his
sombre eyes toward me, but still speaking in the same calm tones. "Had I
a ship at San Augustin in which we could set sail? Or could such a ship
have left the harbour unperceived? Not even a canoe could have been
obtained there without danger of discovery. We have a long journey
before us,--could we set out upon it unprovisioned?"

I hung my head, ashamed, of my doubts. Once it was not my nature to be
suspicious; but so much of trouble had come to me of late that I began
to fear I would never again feel the same confidence in my fellow
creatures, the same implicit trust in Heaven that I had held two years
ago. I had never been a stranger to trouble; but, as a child, I knew it
only as a formless cloud that cast its shadow sometimes on my path,
dimming the sunlight for a moment and hushing the song upon my lips.
Even when m