, to the west,--but go I must. I
had no hope of finding that which I went to seek, and no thought but to
take up that quest. I was a soldier, and I had stood to my post; but now
the need was past, and I could go. In the hall at the Governor's house,
I had written a line of farewell to Rolfe, and had given the paper into
the hand of a trusty fellow, charging him not to deliver it for two
hours to come.

I rowed two miles downstream through the quiet darkness,--so quiet after
the hubbub of the town. When I turned my boat to the shore the day
was close at hand. The stars were gone, and a pale, cold light, more
desolate than the dark, streamed from the east across which ran, like
a faded blood stain, a smear of faint red. Upon the forest the mist lay
heavy. When I drove the boat in amongst the sedge and reeds below the
bank, I could see only the trunks of the nearest trees, hear only the
sullen cry of some river bird that I had disturbed.

Why I was at some pains to fasten the boat to a sycamore that dipped a
pallid arm into the stream I do not know. I never thought to come back
to the sycamore; I never thought to bend to an oar again, to behold
again the river that the trees and the mist hid from me before I had
gone twenty yards into the forest.

CHAPTER XXXIX IN WHICH WE LISTEN TO A SONG

IT was like a May morning, so mild was the air, so gay the sunshine,
when the mist had risen. Wild flowers were blooming, and here and there
unfolding leaves made a delicate fretwork against a deep blue sky.
The wind did not blow; everywhere were stillness soft and sweet, dewy
freshness, careless peace.

Hour after hour I walked slowly through the woodland, pausing now and
then to look from side to side. It was idle going, wandering in a desert
with no guiding star. The place where I would be might lie to the east,
to the west. In the wide enshrouding forest I might have passed it by.
I believed not that I had done so. Surely, surely I should have known;
surely the voice that lived only in my heart would have called to me to
stay.

Beside a newly felled tree, in a glade starred with small white flowers,
I came upon the bodies of a man and a boy, so hacked, so hewn, so robbed
of all comeliness, that at the sight the heart stood still and the brain
grew sick. Farther on was a clearing, and in its midst the charred and
blackened walls of what had been a home. I crossed the freshly turned
earth, and looked in at the cabin door