reamt that you would. Where are my
father and my cousin?"

"Seeking you still, madam, I doubt not, though I have not seen them
since the day after you were taken. They went up the Pamunkey and so
missed you. Thanks to this Susquehannock, I am more fortunate."

She lay and looked at him calmly, no surprise, but only a great peace in
her face. "The mulatto," she said, "I feared him more than all the rest.
When I saw him enter the hut I prayed for death. Did you kill him?"

"I trust so," said Landless, "but I am not certain, I was in too great
haste to make sure."

"I do not care," she said. "You will not let him hurt me--if he
lives--nor let the Indians take me again?"

"No, madam," Landless said.

She smiled like a child and closed her eyes. In the moonlight which
blanched her streaming robe and her loosened hair that, falling to her
knees, wrapped her in a mantle of spun gold, she looked a wraith, a
creature woven of the mist of the stream below, a Loerelei sleeping upon
her rock. Landless, still upon his knee beside her, watched her with a
beating heart, while the Susquehannock, leaning upon his gun, bent his
darkly impassive looks upon them both. At length the latter said, "We
must be far from here before the dogs behind us awake, and the Gold Hair
cannot travel swiftly. Let us be going."

"Madam," said Landless.

She opened her eyes and he helped her to her feet. "We must hasten on,"
he said gently. "They will follow us and we must put as many leagues as
possible between us before they find our trail."

"I did not think of that!" she said, with dilating eyes. "I thought it
was all past--the terror--the horror! Let us go, let us hasten! I am
quite strong; I have learned how to walk through the woods. Come!"

The Indian glided before them and led the way over the friendly rocks.
They left them and found themselves upon a carpet of pine needles, and
then in a dell where the fern grew rankly and the rich black earth gave
like a sponge beneath their feet. Here the Indian made Landless carry
Patricia, and himself came last, walking backwards in the footprints of
the other, and pausing after each step to do all that Indian cunning
could suggest to cover their trail. They came to more rocky ledges and
walked along them for a long distance, then found and went up a wide and
shallow stream. Slowly the pale light of dawn diffused itself through
the forest. In the branches overhead myriads of birds began to flutter
a