m I am going to tell the story. Robin tapster, bring me no more ale,
but good mulled wine! It's cold and getting dark, and I have to drink to
a brave man besides"--

With the old bold laugh in his eyes, he raised himself, for the moment
as strong as I that held him. "Drink to that Englishman, all of ye!" he
cried, "and not in filthy ale, but in good, gentlemanly sack! I'll pay
the score. Here's to him, brave hearts! Here's to my master!"

With his hand at his mouth, and his story untold, he fell back. I held
him in my arms until the brief struggle was over, and then laid his body
down upon the earth.

It might have been one of the clock. For a little while I sat beside
him, with my head bowed in my hands. Then I straightened his limbs and
crossed his hands upon his breast, and kissed him upon the brow, and
left him lying dead in the forest.

It was hard going through the blackness of the night-time woods. Once
I was nigh sucked under in a great swamp, and once I stumbled into some
hole or pit in the earth, and for a time thought that I had broken my
leg. The night was very dark, and sometimes when I could not see the
stars, I lost my way, and went to the right or the left, or even back
upon my track. Though I heard the wolves, they did not come nigh me.
Just before daybreak, I crouched behind a log, and watched a party of
savages file past like shadows of the night.

At last the dawn came, and I could press on more rapidly. For two days
and two nights I had not slept; for a day and a night I had not tasted
food. As the sun climbed the heavens, a thousand black spots, like
summer gnats, danced between his face and my weary eyes. The forest laid
stumbling-blocks before me, and drove me back, and made me wind in and
out when I would have had my path straighter than an arrow. When
the ground allowed I ran; when I must break my way, panting, through
undergrowth so dense and stubborn that it seemed some enchanted thicket,
where each twig snapped but to be on the instant stiff in place again, I
broke it with what patience I might; when I must turn aside for this
or that obstacle I made the detour, though my heart cried out at the
necessity. Once I saw reason to believe that two or more Indians were
upon my trail, and lost time in outwitting them; and once I must go a
mile out of my way to avoid an Indian village.

As the day wore on, I began to go as in a dream. It had come to seem the
gigantic wood of some fantastic tal