ers, talking
eagerly, streamed into the hall. Carrington was the last in line, and he
paused before Landless. The under overseer and the slave Regulus were at
a little distance replacing the cords about Trail's arms. The
Surveyor-General cast a quick glance towards the door, saw that the last
retreating figure was that of Mr. Peyton, and approached his lips close
to Landless's ear.

"You are a brave man," he said in a low and troubled voice. "From my
soul I honor you! I would have saved you, would save you now if I could.
But I am cruelly placed."

"I have no hope for this life--and no fear," said Landless calmly.

Carrington paused irresolute, and a flush rose to his face. "I would
like to hear you say that you do not blame me," he said at last with an
effort.

"I do not blame you," said Landless.

Woodson appeared in the doorway. "The Governor is waiting, Major
Carrington."

"If I can do ought to help you, I will," said Carrington hastily, and
left the room. A moment later came the jingling of reins and the sound
of rapid hoofs quickening into the planter's pace as the Governor and
the Surveyor-General whirled away.

CHAPTER XXIV

A MESSAGE

In an unused attic room of the great house lay Godfrey Landless, cords
about his ankles, and his arms bound to his sides by cords and by a
thick rope, one end of which was fastened to a beam on the wall. He was
alone, for the Muggletonian, Havisham and Trail were confined in the
overseer's house. Opposite him was a small window framing a square of
sky. He had watched light clouds drift across it, and the sun pass
slowly and majestically down it, and the sunset turn the clouds into
floating blood-red plumes. He had been there since noon. Thick walls
kept from him all sound in the house below--it might have been a house
of the dead. Through the closed window came the low, incessant hum of
the summer world without, but no unusual noise. He had heard the sunset
horn, and the song of the slaves coming from the fields, and as dusk
began to fall, the cry of a whip-poor-will.

When the door had closed upon the retreating figures of the men who
brought him there, he had thrown himself upon the floor where he lay,
faint from physical anguish, in a stupor of misery, conscious only of a
sick longing for death. This mood had passed and he was himself again.

As he lay with his eyes following the fiery, shifting feathers of cloud,
he remembered that the gaol at Jamestown