met whenever we could, on Sundays, on Instruction
days, whenever chance offered. He had tried to run away twice before we
met, but he never tried afterwards. His master was a hard man--mine was
worse.... After a while we began to meet in secret--at night.... You are
a lady--that is different--you cannot understand; but I loved him, loved
him as well as any lady in the land could love; better, maybe.... There
came a night when I was followed, and taken, and he with me." She broke
off to smell at the scentless spear of golden-rod which the child held
up, and to say, "Yes, my darling, pretty, pretty, pretty," then went on
with her eyes following the figures walking up and down beside the
stream. "The next night found us in the sheriff's hands, in the gaol at
the court-house. Oh that blank, dreadful, heavy night! I felt the lash
already--I did not mind that--but I saw the platform and the post, and
the gaping crowd beneath. I thought of him, and my heart was sick; I
thought of my mother, and my tears fell like rain.... There was a noise
at the window, and I stood upon my stool to see what it was. It was he!
He had a knife and he worked and wrenched at the bars until he had
wrenched them away, then dragged me through the window and we stood
together beneath the stars--free! Another moment and we were down at the
water side and into a boat which was fastened there. We loosed it and
rowed with all our speed up the river. He had killed the gaoler and
gotten away, bringing with him a musket and an axe. All that night we
rowed, and when morning broke we were well-nigh past the settlements,
for we had been far up river to begin with. That day we hid in the
reeds, but when night came we sped up the stream. We came to the falls
of the far west and left our boat there. For many days we walked through
the woods, hurrying on, day after day, for when we lay down at night, I
saw in my dreams the flash of the torches and heard the baying of the
hounds. After a long while we came to an Indian village not many leagues
from here, and there we found the mercies of the savage kinder than the
mercies of the white man. They may have thought us mad--I do not
know--but they did not harm us. There we dwelt for a time, in the
stranger's wigwam, and there the child was born." She pressed the little
hand which she held, and which she had never ceased to beat against her
bosom, to her lips. "He would have stayed in the village, but in sleep I
still heard