cried brokenly. "And
they slew thee not, Ralph, the heathen who took thee away! Yesternight I
learned that you lived, but I looked not for you here."

I scarce heard or marked what he was saying, and found no time in which
to wonder at his knowledge that I had not perished. I only saw that
he was alone, and that in the evening wood there was no sign of other
living creature.

"Yea, they slew me not, Jeremy," I said. "I would that they had done so.
And you are alone? I am glad that you died not, my friend; yes, faith,
I am very glad that one escaped. Tell me about it, and I will sit here
upon the bank and listen. Was it done in this wood? A gloomy deathbed,
friend, for one so young and fair. She should have died to soft music,
in the sunshine, with flowers about her."

With an exclamation he put me from him, but kept his hand upon my arm
and his steady eyes upon my face.

"She loved laughter and sunshine and sweet songs," I continued. "She
can never know them in this wood. They are outside; they are outside the
world, I think. It is sad, is it not? Faith, I think it is the saddest
thing I have ever known."

He clapped his other hand upon my shoulder. "Wake, man!" he commanded.
"If thou shouldst go mad now--Wake! thy brain is turning. Hold to
thyself. Stand fast, as thou art soldier and Christian! Ralph, she
is not dead. She will wear flowers,--thy flowers,--sing, laugh, move
through the sunshine of earth for many and many a year, please God! Art
listening, Ralph? Canst hear what I am saying?"

"I hear," I said at last, "but I do not well understand."

He pushed me back against a pine, and held me there with his hands upon
my shoulders. "Listen," he said, speaking rapidly and keeping his
eyes upon mine. "All those days that you were gone, when all the world
declared you dead, she believed you living. She saw party after party
come back without you, and she believed that you were left behind in the
forest. Also she knew that the George waited but for the search to be
quite given over, and for my Lord Carnal's recovery. She had been told
that the King's command might not be defied, that the Governor had no
choice but to send her from Virginia. Ralph, I watched her, and I knew
that she meant not to go upon that ship. Three nights agone she stole
from the Governor's house, and, passing through the gates that the
sleeping warder had left unfastened, went toward the forest. I saw her
and followed her, and at the edge o