with a great cry he caught her hands in his and drew her towards him.
"Is it?" he cried.

"Yes," she answered with laughter trembling on her lips. "Death hath
enfranchised us, you and me. Give me my betrothal kiss, my only love."

For them one moment of Paradise, of bliss ineffable and supreme. The
next, the crags behind them rang to the sound of the war whoop.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE LAST FIGHT

Out from the forest rushed the remnant of that band which had smoked the
peace pipe with the Governor one sunny afternoon on the banks of the
Pamunkey. Tall and large of limb, painted with all fantastic and ghastly
devices, and decorated with hideous mementoes of nameless deeds; with
the lust of blood written large in every fierce lineament and dark and
rolling eye; with raised hands grasping knife and tomahawk, and lips
uttering cries that seemed not of earth--a more appalling vision could
not have issued from out the beautiful, treacherous forest, a more
crashing discord have come into the music of the golden evening.

For the two in their rocky fortress beneath the crags the apparition had
no terrors. All the pain, the anguish, the hopelessness of the world was
passing from them--the cry that swelled through the forest was its
knell. They smiled to hear it, and with raised faces looked beyond the
many-tinted evening skies into clear spaces where Love was all. The
intoxication of the moment when hidden and despairing love became love
triumphant and acknowledged abode with them. In the very grasp of death
ineffable bliss possessed them. Their countenances changed; the lines of
care and pain, the marks of tears, were all gone and the beauty of the
happy soul shone out. For that brief space of time transcendent youth
and loveliness was theirs. About them, as about the sun now sinking
behind the low hills, there breathed a glory, a dying splendor as bright
as it was fleeting. They felt, too, a lightness and gaiety of
spirit--they had drunk of the nectar of the gods, and no leaden weight
of care, no heavy sorrow, could ever touch them, ever drag them down
again to the sad earth.

"You are beautiful," said Landless, gazing at her, even in the act of
raising his gun to his shoulder; "as beautiful as you were the day I
first saw you. I hear the drone of the bees in the vines at Verney
Manor. I smell the roses. I look up and see the Rose of the World. My
eyes were dazzled then, are dazzled now, my Rose of the World."

"Th