the mulatto, it might come to that; if the mulatto lived, he knew that
she would kill herself. He had given her the knife that had been
Monakatocka's, and she had it now, hidden in her bosom.... The glory of
the autumn day darkened and went out, the bitter waters of affliction
surged over him, an immeasurable sea; it seemed to him that until then
he had never suffered. A cold sweat broke out upon him, and with an
inarticulate cry of rage and despair he struck at his wounded foot as at
a deadly foe. The girl cried out at the sound of the blow.

"Oh, don't, don't! What are you doing? You have loosened the bandage,
and it is bleeding afresh."

Despite his effort to prevent her she readjusted the kerchief which she
had wound about the torn and crushed foot, very carefully and tenderly.
"It must hurt you very much," she said pityingly.

He took the little ministering hands in his and kissed them. "Oh, madam,
madam!" he groaned. "God knows I would shed every drop of my blood a
thousand times to save you. Death to me is nothing, nor life so fair
that I should care to keep it. The grave is a less dreadful prison than
those on earth, and I think to find in God a more merciful Judge. But
you--so young and beautiful, with friends, love--"

She stopped him with a gesture full of dignity and sweetness. "That life
is gone forever,--it is thousands of miles and ages on ages away. It is
a world more distant than the stars, and we are nearer to Heaven than to
it.... It is strange to think how we have drifted, you and I, to this
rock. A year ago we had never seen each other's faces, had never heard
each other's names, and yet you were coming to this rock from prison and
over seas, and I was coming to meet you.... And it is our death place,
and we will die together, and to-morrow maybe the little birds will
cover us with leaves as they did the children in the story. They were
brother and sister.... When our time comes I will not be afraid, for I
will be with you ... my brother."

Landless covered his face with his hands.

The shadows grew longer and the cloud castles began to flush rosily,
though the sun still rode above the tree tops. A purple light filled the
aisles of the forest, through which a herd of deer, making for some
accustomed lick, passed like a phantom troop. They vanished, and from
out the stillness of the glades came the sudden, startled barking of a
fox. A shadow darted across a sunlit alley from gloom to gloom, pau