picture of laughing water and waving forest framed in the doorway.

"I thought I should never see the sunshine again," she said dreamily.
"Did Margery give _you_ the message?"

"Yes, she met me under the mulberries. I would not wait to rouse your
father, but calling the overseers and the blacks from the fields, came
at once."

"I owe you my life," she said. "You and--"

Her eyes left the summer outside and came back to the shadowy forms
within the tobacco house. "I will go with you directly, cousin," she
said quietly, "but first I wish to speak to that man."

He shot a swift glance at her face, but drew back with a bow, and she
walked with a steady step up to Landless. "Fall back a little," she said
with an imperious wave of her hand to the men about him. They obeyed
her. Landless, left standing before her, his arms bound to his sides,
raised his head and looked her in the face. She met his eyes. "You lied
to me," she said in a low, even voice.

"Once, madam, and to save others," he said proudly,

"Not once, but twice. Do you think that now I believe that tale you told
me that night, that fairy tale of persecuted innocence? When I think
that I ever believed it I hate myself."

"Nevertheless, it is true, madam."

"It is false! Yesterday I thought of you as a gallant gentleman, greatly
wronged ... and I pitied you. To-day I am wiser."

He held her eyes with his own for a moment, then let them go. "Some day
you will know," he said.

She turned from him and held out her hands to Sir Charles. He hurried
to her and she clung to him. "Take me away," she said in a whisper.
"Take me home."

He put his arm about her. "You are faint," he said tenderly. "Come! the
air will revive you."

Supporting her on his arm, he guided her from the house. As they passed
the body stretched across the threshold, the skirt of her robe touched
the blood in which it was lying. She saw it and shuddered.

"Blood is upon me!" she said. "It is an omen!"

"A good one, then," said her companion coolly, "for it is the blood of a
fanatic traitor. Think not of it." He turned at the threshold and cast a
careless glance back into the tobacco house. "Woodson, get rid of this
carrion, and bring these men quietly to the great house, where your
master will deal with them."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE QUESTION

"We know all but two things, but those are the most important of all,"
said the Governor, tapping his jeweled fingers against the tab