oken, the fallen leaves groun
underfoot. In one place there was blood upon the leaves.

The forest seemed suddenly very quiet,--quite soundless save for the
beating of our hearts. On every side opened red and yellow ways, sunny
glades, labyrinthine paths, long aisles, all dim with the blue haze like
the cloudy incense in stone cathedrals, but nothing moved in them save
the creatures of the forest. Without the hollow there was no sign. The
leaves looked undisturbed, or others, drifting down, had hidden any
marks there might have been; no footprints, no broken branches, no token
of those who had left the hollow. Down which of the painted ways had
they gone, and where were they now?

Sparrow and I sat our horses, and stared now down this alley, now down
that, into the blue that closed each vista.

"The Santa Teresa is just off the big spring," he said at last. "She
must have dropped down there in order to take in water quietly."

"The man that came upon her is still in town,--or was an hour agone," I
replied.

"Then she has n't sailed yet," he said.

In the distance something grew out of the blue mist. I had not lived
thirteen years in the woodland to be dim of sight or dull of hearing.

"Some one is coming," I announced. "Back your horse into this clump of
sumach."

The sumach grew thick, and was draped, moreover, with some broad-leafed
vine. Within its covert we could see with small danger of being seen,
unless the approaching figure should prove to be that of an Indian. It
was not an Indian; it was my Lord Carnal. He came on slowly, glancing
from side to side, and pausing now and then as if to listen. He was so
little of a woodsman that he never looked underfoot.

Sparrow touched my arm and pointed down a glade at right angles with
the path my lord was pursuing. Up this glade there was coming toward
us another figure,--a small black figure that moved swiftly, looking
neither to the right nor to the left.

Black Lamoral stood like a stone; the brown mare, too, had learned what
meant a certain touch upon her shoulder. Sparrow and I, with small
shame for our eavesdropping, bent to our saddlebows and looked sideways
through tiny gaps in the crimson foliage.

My lord descended one side of the hollow, his heavy foot bringing down
the dead leaves and loose earth; the Italian glided down the opposite
side, disturbing the economy of the forest as little as a snake would
have done.

"I thought I should never meet y