like to ruin that devil who but now robbed you of your
hard-earned property?"

"Would I not?" cried the murderer with a tremendous oath. "I'd give
everything but life and gold to do it, as that cunning devil well knew.
I'd give my soul!"

"Would you like to be shown how to get more gold than old Godwyn's
store, twenty times told? To get your freedom? To have some black, sweet
hours in which to work your will on them at the house yonder? To plunge
your arms to the elbow in the master's money chest; to become drunken
with his wine; to strike him down, and that smiling imp his cousin, and
that other devil, Woodson; to hear the women cry for mercy--and cry in
vain? You would like all this?"

"Show me the way!" cried the brute with a ferocious light in his
bloodshot eyes. "Show me the way to do it safely, and I'll--" He broke
off and threatened the air with malignant fists.

"Go to the village on the Pamunkey," said Luiz Sebastian with his most
feline expression. "I will come to you there the first night I can slip
away, I and our friend, the Senor Trail. There we will have our little
conference. Mother of God! Senor Landless may find that others can plot
as well as he and his accursed heretics."

[Footnote 1: The modern York.]

CHAPTER XIV

A MIDNIGHT EXPEDITION

Four nights later, the hour before midnight found Landless walking
steadily through the forest, bound upon a mission which he had had in
his mind since the night after the murder of Godwyn. This was the first
night since that event upon which he had deemed it advisable to leave
the quarters, having no mind to be captured as a runaway by one of the
many search parties which were scouring the peninsula between the two
great rivers for the murderer of Robert Godwyn. But the search was now
trending northward towards Maryland, to which colony runaways usually
turned their steps, and he felt that he might venture.

There was little undergrowth in the primeval forest, and the rows of
vast and stately trees were as easy to thread as the pillared aisles of
a cathedral. When he came to one of the innumerable streamlets that
caught the land in a net of silver, he removed his coarse shoes and
stockings, and waded it. The great branches overhead shut in a night
that was breathlessly hot and still. He could see the stars only when he
crossed the streams or emerged into one of the many little open glades.
He walked warily, making no sound, and now and then sto