towards my master's daughter as to fear nothing from
their hands on that score. The idle and censorious cannot choose but
believe when you say, 'I am come scatheless through weeks of daily and
hourly companionship with this man. Rebel and traitor and gaol-bird
though he be, he never injured me in word, thought, or deed....' For all
these reasons, madam, we must be companions still."

She had covered her face while he was speaking, and she kept it hidden
when he had finished. The slowly lengthening shadows of the trees had
barred the little glade with black when he spoke again. It was only to
ask in his usual voice if she were rested and ready to continue their
journey.

She raised her head and looked at him with swimming eyes, then held out
two trembling hands. He took them, helped her to her feet, and before
releasing them, bent and touched them with his lips. Then side by side
and in silence they traveled on through the halcyon calm of the world
around them.

CHAPTER XXXIV

AN ACCIDENT

It was early morning, and the mist lay heavy upon the forest and on the
bosom of the James. Landless and Patricia raked together the dying
embers of their fire and heaped fresh wood upon them. The flames leaped
up, warming their chilled bodies and filling the hollow that had been
their camping place with a cheerful light, in which the moisture that
clothed tree bole and fallen log and withered fern glistened like
diamonds. Their breakfast of deer meat and broiled fish, nuts and a few
late clusters of grape, with coldest water from a spring hard by, was
eaten amidst laughter and pleasant talk. When they had lingered through
it and when Landless had carefully extinguished their fire and had seen
to the priming of his gun, they addressed themselves to their journey.

A bowshot away was the river, and Patricia willed that they walk along
its banks that they might see the white mist lift, and the silver flash
of fish rising from the water, and the swoop of the kingfisher. Landless
agreeing, they went down to the river, and standing upon a rocky spit of
ground which ran far out into the stream, they looked down the misty
expanse, then turned involuntarily and looked up. At that moment the fog
lifted.

"Ah!" cried Patricia, and shrunk back, cowering almost to the ground.

Landless seized her in his arms and ran with her across the shingle and
up the bank. Plunging into the woods he made for the little stream which
flowed pas