e
drinking; there was a star low in the south that shone and beckoned. The
leagues between my wife and me were few. I saw her standing beneath the
star, with a little purple flower in her hand.

Suddenly, a bend in the stream hiding the star, I became aware that
Diccon was no longer keeping step with me, but had fallen somewhat to
the rear. I turned, and he was leaning heavily, with drooping head,
against the trunk of a tree.

"Art so worn as that?" I exclaimed. "Put more heart into thy heels,
man!"

He straightened himself and strode on beside me. "I don't know what came
over me for a minute," he answered. "The wolves are loud to-night. I
hope they'll keep to their side of the water."

A stone's throw farther on, the stream curving to the west, we left it,
and found ourselves in a sparsely wooded glade, with a bare and sandy
soil beneath our feet, and above, in the western sky, a crescent moon.
Again Diccon lagged behind, and presently I heard him groan in the
darkness.

I wheeled. "Diccon!" I cried. "What is the matter?"

Before I could reach him he had sunk to his knees. When I put my hand
upon his arm and again demanded what ailed him, he tried to laugh, then
tried to swear, and ended with another groan. "The ball did graze my
arm," he said, "but it went on into my side. I'll just lie here and
die, and wish you well at Jamestown. When the red imps come against you
there, and you open fire on them, name a bullet for me."

CHAPTER XXXV IN WHICH I COME TO THE GOVERNOR'S HOUSE

I LAID him down upon the earth, and, cutting away his doublet and the
shirt beneath, saw the wound, and knew that there was a journey indeed
that he would shortly make. "The world is turning round," he muttered,
"and the stars are falling thicker than the hailstones yesterday. Go on,
and I will stay behind,--I and the wolves."

I took him in my arms and carried him back to the bank of the stream,
for I knew that he would want water until he died. My head was bare, but
he had worn his cap from the gaol at Jamestown that night. I filled it
with water and gave him to drink; then washed the wound and did what I
could to stanch the bleeding. He turned from side to side, and presently
his mind began to wander, and he talked of the tobacco in the fields
at Weyanoke. Soon he was raving of old things, old camp fires and
night-time marches and wild skirmishes, perils by land and by sea; then
of dice and wine and women. Once he cried out th