trees, and at the smoke of many fires going up from the
forest to the sky, from a world of hate and pain and woe to the heaven
where she dwelt, and then I turned and went to the table, where had been
set bread and meat and wine.

At the sound of my footstep Lady Wyatt uncovered her face. "Is there
aught that I can do for you, sir?" she asked timidly.

"I have not broken my fast for many hours, madam," I answered. "I would
eat and drink, that I may not be found wanting in strength. There is a
thing that I have yet to do."

Rising from her chair, she brushed away her tears, and coming to the
table with a little housewifely eagerness would not let me wait upon
myself, but carved and poured for me, and then sat down opposite me and
covered her eyes with her hand.

"I think that the Governor is quite safe, madam," I said. "I do not
believe that the Indians will take the palisade. It may even be that,
knowing we are prepared, they will not attack at all. Indeed, I think
that you may be easy about him."

She thanked me with a smile. "It is all so strange and dreadful to me,
sir," she said. "At my home, in England, it was like a Sunday morning
all the year round,--all stillness and peace; no terror, no alarm. I
fear that I am not yet a good Virginian."

When I had eaten, and had drunk the wine she gave me, I rose, and asked
her if I might not see her safe within the fort before I joined her
husband at the palisade. She shook her head, and told me that there were
with her faithful servants, and that if the savages broke in upon the
town she would have warning in time to flee, the fort being so close at
hand. When I thereupon begged her leave to depart, she first curtsied to
me, and then, again with tears, came to me and took my hand in hers. "I
know that there is naught that I can say.... Your wife loved you, sir,
with all her heart." She drew something from the bosom of her gown.
"Would you like this? It is a knot of ribbon that she wore. They found
it caught in a bush at the edge of the forest."

I took the ribbon from her and put it to my lips, then unknotted it and
tied it around my arm; and then, wearing my wife's colors, I went softly
out into the street, and turned my face toward the guest house and the
man whom I meant to kill.

CHAPTER XXXVII IN WHICH MY LORD AND I PART COMPANY

THE door of the guest house stood wide, and within the lower room were
neither men that drank nor men that gave to drink. Host