ut the whip-poor-wills wailed on, and once a catamount
screamed, and the deer, coming to a lick close by, made a trampling over
the fern.

Landless, tightly bound to a great bay tree with thongs of deerskin,
watched the night grow old with hard, despairing eyes. The stars paled
and the moon rose softly above the tree-tops, silvering the world
beneath. By her light he saw the little glade of which the tree to which
he was bound marked the centre, and the recumbent forms of those who
were to return to the settlements stretched on Indian mats laid upon the
short grass. Worn out with the toil of the day and the storm and stress
of the night before, they slumbered heavily. The watcher in their midst
thought, "If I could sleep!" and resolutely closed his eyes, but the
vision of a flying canoe and a brightness of golden hair, which had
vexed him, passing up the reaches of the river over and over and over
again, was with him still, and he opened them and raised them to the
stars, thinking, "She may be above them now."

How still it was! no air, no breath, no sound--the thongs, that, wound
many times around his body, bound him to the tree, fell at his feet, a
figure slipped from behind the trunk, laid a hand, in which was a knife
that gleamed in the moonlight, upon his arm, and whispering, "Follow,"
glided over the grass, past the sleepers and into the forest.

Swiftly but cautiously Landless went after it. The overseer lay within
ten feet of him; he passed him, passed the unconscious servants,
crossed a strip of moonlight, entered the shadow of a locust, and all
but stumbled over a man lying asleep beneath it. He recoiled, and a twig
snapped beneath his foot. The sleeper stirred, turned upon his side, and
opened his eyes. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone so brightly
that there was soft light even beneath the heavy branches of the trees,
and by this light his Majesty's Surveyor-General and his Majesty's
rebellious, convicted, and condemned servant recognized each other. For
one long minute they stared each at the other, then, without a word or
sign to denote that he was aware that aught stood between him and the
moonlight, Carrington lay down again, pillowed his head upon his arm and
closed his eyes. Landless was passing on with a light and steady step
and the ghost of a smile upon his lips when the apparently slumbering
figure put forth an arm and laid something long and dark across his
pathway. He glanced quickly aro